Dan J. Brennanhttps://www.danjbrennan.com/
Husband, Father, Friend, Writer, Visionary, Boundary-Buster, Follower of Jesus
en-USMon, 25 Feb 2019 08:08:52 -0600http://www.typepad.com/http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specificationDanJBrennanhttps://feedburner.google.comProgressive-Conservative Intimacies: The Good News of Friendship and New Possibilitieshttps://www.danjbrennan.com/2019/02/progressive-conservative-intimacies-the-good-news-of-friendship-and-new-possibilities.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2019/02/progressive-conservative-intimacies-the-good-news-of-friendship-and-new-possibilities.htmlAs I write this, I am aware of some super progressive friends in my life, in my workplace, in my church, and in my FB feed. I’m also aware that I have some super nuanced conservatives or evangelicals (they would...As I write this, I am aware of some super progressive friends in my life, in my workplace, in my church, and in my FB feed. I’m also aware that I have some super nuanced conservatives or evangelicals (they would not self-identify as progressive) in my life, in my workplace, in my church, and in my FB feed.

If you google that phrase “progressive-conservative intimacy” I can assure you, Google will not lead you anything near Brian McLaren, Rachel Held Evans,

Richard Rohr, or Scot McKnight, N.T. Wright, or Greg Boyd. You can insert any progressive or evangelical name with a huge following on social media or writes books that people want to buy when they come out.

Before I go any further, let's define progressive as any Christian who self-identifies as a progressive and "conservative" any Christian--evangelical, nuanced conservative, Republican who doesn't identify as progressive. Broad definitions. Christians who are caught up in the toxic culture between Democrats and Republicans.

I identify myself as a progressive and my wife is a committed conservative. She has voted Republican in the presidential elections for several decades. I have voted Democrat for the last three. Some of my dearest friends might not identify as committed conservatives but they wouldn't identify themselves as progressives, either. Let's say nuanced evangelicals.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say one of the most revolutionary lessons friendship has taught me in the last ten years: Friendship closeness--emotional, intellectual, bodily, spiritual closeness--in platonic or marital closeness--does not require a perfect match of political-psychological identity.

I can tell you as my progressive-conservative intimacy matured and flourished in my marriage and friendships with women who were progressives and nuanced evangelicals, I didn’t find guidance, mentoring, or flourishing wisdom from the some of the biggest leaders/authors in the progressive movement or Missio Alliance.

They were publishing blogs, books, and tweets that were driving progressives and evangelicals further apart. They were hosting FB conversations/groups driving a further wedge between progressives and conservatives after the emerging movement collapsed. Neither side had a grammar of intimacy and friendship for individuals on the other side. There was no template I could refer to that either Missio Alliance or the progressive world presented with a strong Yes! forward.

But for me, I continued to experience friendship closeness with friends who were progressives and friends who were nuanced evangelicals. Women and men. That wasn't supposed to happen post-emerging. It was uncharted territory.

And my marriage continued to flourish!!! My wife was my best friend when I turned toward the progressive direction. Gosh, that was a complex turn for us and our marriage. She was my best friend during the turn and she remains my best friend even though she considers herself a committed conservative politically.

It's been so disappointing to me now that we are steeped in this toxic political culture in social media these leaders within these broad Christian movements have not come together to point us toward the good news of Christian friendships between progressives and conservatives. Why aren't they pointing us to the most generous, attentive, flourishing peacemaking story--about how we as friends of Christ can flourish together in the deepest peace in heaven and earth?

Sure, please, don't get me wrong, it is beautiful for progressives like Brian McLaren to point us to "the great spiritual migration" (a title to a book of his) and reach out to leaders from other religions. That is really beautiful and necessary. It is a beautiful step toward peacemaking. But these progressive leaders also have contributed to the downward spiral to where we are as liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans.

I can now say this after several years of participating as an unapologetic progressive: progressive leaders with the largest following have no ethic of Christian friendship that is healing the wounds between them and conservatives or between Democrats and Republicans at this hour.

How can the progressive leaders/bloggers turn a deaf ear to the toxic divide between Republicans and Democrats happening on social media? I direct the question toward progressives because they are the ones preaching abounding diversity, openness, wide-open inclusion, and hospitality. How it is possible for these progressive leaders to have no ethic of healing friendships, peacemaking friendships when neuroscience and psychology have given us extraordinary insights into how humans (conservatives and progressives) can repair all kinds of ruptured relationships? The new science of love offers staggering implications for repairing and healing the wounds of ruptured attachments between conservatives and progressives.

As someone who has now nurtured and navigated deep, intimate progressive-conservative attachments for several years I am still waiting for leaders in Missio Alliance and the progressive movement to consciously turn toward their neighbor across the political-theological divide and lean in.

After seating at this huge, huge intersection where psychology, theology, philosophy, social psychology, and friendship intersect for several years now, I have more hope than ever that Christians from both the left and the right have access to the most generous, healthy, attentive, flourishing peacemaking psychology to heal the wounds of ruptured conservative-progressive attachments in our families, friendships, and churches and our cities.

Even though the growth and development of progressive-conservative intimacies in my marriage and friendships got no inspiring vision from either progressive leaders or Missio Alliance leaders, it did not happen in a vacuum. There is no shortage of psychological and relational wisdom offered by spiritual directors, therapists, psychologists, philosophers, and ethicists in the Western world.

How could it be that Annie McKee can write a substantive book, How to Be Happy at Work with a chapter on linking happiness, companionate love, and workplace friendships. and we have no progressive or Missio Alliance leaders coming together in companionate friendships for the supreme telos of enjoying and loving God?

For months and months, as our toxic political culture continued to spiral downwards, I longed for two committed Christian leaders from these culturally different communities to give Christians--committed Democrats and committed Republicans inspiring hope companionate love--progressive-conservative intimacies in friendship. Or for them to come together writing a book pointing our divided nation toward the practice and grammar of intimacy and friendship.

Then, I came across a new book, I Think You're Wrong (But I am Listening). What a breath of fresh air! They didn't solve our nation's problems but they did show the power of Christian friendship when a committed Republican and a committed Democrat come together to create a friendship with a positive direction forward.

The same Christians (progressives and evangelicals) pointing us to the insurmountable cultural obstacles between us as reasons for not making any progress are living in the same culture where neuroscience and attachment theories are exploding all around us. A culture where psychological and relational wisdom abounds and that is before we even begin to approach a Christian ethic of love and friendship.

While totally ascribing thanks to the grace and boundless generosity to God's friendship presence, my deep friendships into the impossible--progressive-conservative intimacies--required a significant amount of intentionality. We have the power to turn superficial relationships between progressives and conservatives into deep reciprocal friendship attachments.

How can it not be an urgent matter for both progressives and evangelicals to access the positive power of Christian friendship toward each other at this hour? I have a story of wonder. In fact, I have several stories of wonder. In the midst of this toxic culture, as someone who is progressive I have several valuable, cherished, irreplaceable, close friendships with nuanced conservatives. And I enjoy and treasure my friendship with my spouse. I am living the impossible dream.

Both the progressive and the conservative can retain their essential uniqueness as their self and be best friends.

This is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome for progressive-conservative best intimacies. For many progressives and conservatives of course, the fear of losing one's identity, the integrity of one's identity is the greatest threat. Both progressives and conservatives passionately believe they have experienced a "conversion" to where they are now that makes their respective intimate attachments mutually exclusive.

There is this existential resolve therefore, on both sides, of no turning back, no retreating from their essential uniqueness as to their theological-political identity in the present moment. Love, identity, and intimate attachments are all bound up in the self. To be open to a friendship union--a deep friendship attachment endangers our unique identity, our unique self and the big story of how we arrived where we are in the present moment.

In other words, if I, as a progressive, open my inner self up in a trusting, vulnerable passionate openness toward my conservative friend, am I not in danger of eradicating, submerging, or even betraying the differences between us? How can I share identity--close intimate attachment of a shared life--with a conservative spouse or friend, and not lose my identity?

For many of us, the risks are too great. The price is too high. Our conversation stories require psychological integrity and tribal purity--whether we are progressive or conservative. I discovered along the way that the same kind of dynamics that occur in the can-a-man-and-woman-be-friends question happen in the progressive-conservative purity psychology. The deep suspicion and accusation that authentic connection cannot happen. They must be phonies or out of touch with the real meaning of what it means to be attached like that.

But what if we could be our essential authentic selves and lovingly befriend--emotionally, spiritually, psychologically invest attentiveness, respect, reverence, kindness, and intimate tenderness--our friend with significant theological-political differences? This opens up a whole new world of relating. Two friends with differences in one friendship.

Psychotherapists Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Faith Bethelard suggest that, "Friendship is about reciprocal cherishing. . .this is the essence of friendship." With my gradual turn from voting Republican to voting Democrat and becoming a progressive evangelical, something quite astonishing happened. In the midst of real, emerging political-theological differences, some aspect or form of reciprocal cherishing continued between me and Sheila and between me and my nuanced evangelical friends.

Reciprocal cherishing is not supposed to happen between a committed progressive and a committed conservative. Between progressive and evangelical. But as time has continued onward, reciprocal cherishing grew between my wife and me, and between some great nuanced evangelicals and myself. This reciprocal cherishing is never mechanistic or an expression of false polite niceness. It is by no means surface neighborly kindness.

Mutual cherishment is not what is happening in social media between progressives and nuanced evangelicals. But I now know, what its like, what it feels like, to enter into mutual cherishment with friends who think differently and vote differently than I do.

In fact in this context, reciprocal cherishing births a whole new hybrid for progressive-conservative intimacies: friends who are irreplaceable. The important factor in friendship beautifully emerges when the splendor of friendship-love moves and grows in reciprocal cherishing. My wife and several of my nuanced evangelical friends are so valuable to me because we powerfully cherish one another and our intimacies.

To experience cherishing--to receive its splendor fully--in a text, in listening attentiveness, in a compliment, in a smile, in a gift, in a hug or a kiss on the cheek, or a physical affectionate touch--from a nuanced evangelical friend--male or female is learning to share love in the midst of real poltical differences.

Part of the fascinating parallels between the question of male-female friendship (I'm not assuming binary stuff here) and the question of progressive-conservative intimacy is that reciprocal cherishing is impossible. In both popular scenarios, it is widely assumed that if individuals involved experience powerful cherishing between them in friendship, they have lost their authentic claim to their selves.

Now, this is reciprocal cherishing the friend in front of you. Real respect and real conversation--mutual engagement--happen when we open ourselves up to reciprocal cherishing in the moment. Giving and receiving in cherishing in the midst of political differences where may not receive external/internal validation about our political opinions and assumptions creates something profound: progressive-conservative intimacies. It creates a cherished intimate life. A cherished shared identity: two friends, one friendship.

In this toxic political-cultural divide between progressives and conservatives, I fully resonate with psychotherapists Elisabeth Young-Bruehl and Faith Bethelard. "A deep friendship is therapeutic." I experience this with both my cherished progressive friends and my nuanced evangelical friends!! They go on to say, "it differs crucially from psychotherapy. With a friend, you trust that if one day you are exhausted and harassed, the next you can be depended upon and dependable. Neither of you is the designated needy one; the helping role shifts easily—as it does not and should not in psychotherapy. When you are asking your friend for support, you are at the same time expecting to give it—and feeling able to give it because you have asked for and received it."

More to come.

]]>Dan BrennanMon, 25 Feb 2019 08:08:52 -0600Friendship Wisdom: The Power of Opposite-Sex Best Friends Pt 2https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/10/friendship-wisdom-the-power-of-opposite-sex-best-friends-pt-2.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/10/friendship-wisdom-the-power-of-opposite-sex-best-friends-pt-2.htmlI finished reading John Townsend's book, How to be a Best Friend Forever a couple of weeks ago. So many thoughts were swirling in my head! From 2004 onward I have been able to say that some of my best...I finished reading John Townsend's book, How to be a Best Friend Forever a couple of weeks ago. So many thoughts were swirling in my head! From 2004 onward I have been able to say that some of my best friends are my female friends. I'm not a fan of how-to self-help books on complex friendships. I realized a while back that I had not read this one even though I have read thousands of pages of friendship books.

My other expected disappointment with the book was my guess on how he was going to treat opposite-sex best friends—as platonic BFs. Because I was somewhat familiar with Townsend I wasn't surprised to see him crack the door for a man and woman to be best friends. However, I also wasn't surprised when he fell far short of spreading out the feast of shared best friendship wisdom between the sexes.

How could he pass up the opportunity to explore the unplumbed depths of friendship wisdom?

When I became an egalitarian precisely because my friendships with women around ten years ago, I thought it was only a matter of time before I would see evangelical egalitarians inviting us to the glorious promise of non-romantic best friendships. I'm still waiting for that to happen.

What I discovered was that for egalitarian superstars, that is the bloggers-theologians with the huge following and writing the books, evangelical equality stopped far short of integrating the closeness of Christ's presence with the practice of opposite-sex best friendship. What was presented time and time again was this wonderful, beautiful, glorious path toward ecclesial wisdom/practices of drawing near together with no corresponding theological or experiential friendship wisdom when a man and woman was together, alone.

The practice of opposite-sex besties—including two friends being together alone for a beautiful kind of togetherness—got no airtime. Or, paraphrasing 20th-century comedian Rodney Dangerfield, "the practice of friendship don't get no respect." This is the cast in the same mold pattern for evangelical egalitarians for years. David Fitch's recent book on practices Faithful Practices did not include the practice of friendship.

I loved Aaron Niequist's new book, The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us From Drowning. But, it too, follows the same mold. The practice of friendship did not make Aaron's cut as a powerful—as in Spirit-inspired, Spirit-anointed, Spirit-infused—practice to be included in the book.

This glaring evangelical inattentiveness has become so evidently clear in the past eight months in reaction to ChurchToo reaching the egalitarian megachurch, Willow Creek. With no theology of opposite-sex best friends (for the rest of the post referred as BF) including no theology of a man and woman being together alone, egalitarian leaders have rushed to fill in the void of wisdom with repeated emphases on highlighting the nature of sexual assault, on the need for women's psychological safety, and women's well-being. All those emphases are absolutely necessary.

Where are the egalitarian pastors or theologians joyfully stepping into the void of friendship wisdom the last eight months?

We have no paired friends claiming an Oprah-Gayle King like friendship with their cross-gender friend. There are no egalitarian theologians/pastors enthusiastically sharing pictures on their Facebook or blogs that show the kind of platonic closeness Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson enjoyed.

There are no egalitarian bloggers with large audience platforms relishing in delight in carving out intentional friendship dinner dates with their platonic best friend like Cristina Perez does. Tell me when you have seen a cheek-to-cheek selfie on FB between two opposite-sex egalitarian theologians? Co-pastors? We have no egalitarian blogger (that is, an egalitarian with a huge audience following) lavishing praise and physical affection toward their opposite-sex BF like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

You know that's true if you have been following evangelical egalitarians. Oh sure, there is a lot of talk about different kinds of friendships among egalitarian pastors and leaders. But best friends forever wisdom? No glorious good news of shared friendship wisdom has emerged on this side of Willow Creek meltdown eight months afterward.

I have learned this as a good rule of thumb in the evangelical subculture (including egalitarians). Take the most respected bloggers, theologians, and pastors. Friendship wisdom coming from their books, blogs, and churches will mirror what these leaders/voices have experienced, practiced, or thoroughly enjoyed. The entire sub-culture take its cues from the experiential "wisdom" of its leaders. We might call this the Willow Creek culture of egalitarian practices forty years in the making.

This glaring silence of friendship wisdom in the evangelical sub-culture at this hour means God has no immediate good news for two mature leaders who are good friends to have the God-given potential to become best friends--a wonderful togetherness of being together alone as shared trust, shared power, shared wisdom.

Expressed in another way: there are no delightful stories of shared wisdom of friendship energy between two opposite-sex best friends. Together, alone. No friendship energy toward shared solitude. No shared friendship wisdom of two good egalitarian leaders who became BFFs.

Or expressed another way, we could say perhaps that kind of shared wisdom for evangelical egalitarians has been perceived as high-risk. There is nothing that quite exposes the evangelical anxiety and the feeling of high-risk behaviors than two opposite-sex BFs trusting each other together, alone as besties.

How far can two friends go? Can two good friends nurture their God-given potential to become BFFs? Does God's good news for contemporary men and women include open-ended friendship? No limits? Open-ended shared friendship wisdom for two friends who are good friends to become best friends? What kind of personal friendships show the world God's beautiful and wonderful shared wisdom?

Let's visit of the cherished pop psychology myths Townsend challenges right off the bat at the beginning of the book:

He pushed back against the idea that there was only one kind of relationship that could be called "best friends forever."

He challenged the deep-seated idea that BFFs were exclusively a romantic relationship.

He believed that two friends enjoying a good friendship could intentionally take it to a BFF.

He believed that within our friendship contacts among good friends were bonafide potential best friends.

Over the last ten years I have come to the believe the surprising good news that men and women both share the power of friendship wisdom. God-given potential to be opposite-sex best friends. Surprising in the sense of conventional wisdom that is found on the bookshelves in New Life bookstores. I have come to believe during this period of time that God's good news for us is that both men and women can share open-ended friendship wisdom to guide us to become opposite-sex best friends forever.

More to come. We'll explore anxiety, high-risk behaviors, and shared wisdom in part 3.

]]>Dan BrennanThu, 25 Oct 2018 09:50:55 -0500Friendship Wisdom: The Power of Opposite-Sex Best Friendshttps://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/10/friendship-wisdom-the-power-of-opposite-sex-best-friends.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/10/friendship-wisdom-the-power-of-opposite-sex-best-friends.htmlEver since the middle of the last decade when I could say a couple of my female friends were some of my best friends, I have hungered for friendship wisdom about opposite-sex best friends. That might be only a surprise...Ever since the middle of the last decade when I could say a couple of my female friends were some of my best friends, I have hungered for friendship wisdom about opposite-sex best friends. That might be only a surprise to you if are a new to this blog.

I finished reading John Townsend's 2011 book, How to be a Best Friend Foreverlast week. Although I have a voracious appetite for friendship books, I haven't had an urgency to read it because I was pretty sure he would not delve into opposite-sex best friends. After all, Townsend has a solid evangelical following and there are no books in New Life bookstores that address BFFs between the sexes. Popular evangelical authors who want their books to sell at New Life don't write about nonromantic BFFs. Power and opposite-sex best friends do not mix in the evangelical sub-culture.

My low interest in reading the book also stemmed from my ambivalence toward how-to books on best friendships. How is it possible to write a how-to book on a complex subject like best friends forever? The subject of best friends by itself is a complex subject that defies formualic approaches. But deep friends with no expiration date?

I have read some great books on friendship over the past fifteen years. None of them are how-to books.

If you are already a fan of John Townsend's books, you will probably see a lot of strengths in this book. Even though I respect Townsend, I came to the book with low expectations. Perhaps because my bar was so low, he surprised me at some points. Although it would not make my top ten books on best friendships, I came away with an appreciation toward how he approaches the subject.

Since I still claim some female friends as some of my best friends years later, I thought I would share a few reactions that bubbled out while I was reading this popular psychologist make a case for best friends forever.

The Gospel Invites Women and Men to be Friends with God

This is the foundation for all opposite-sex best friends. It is the foundation for all best friends forever. I was disappointed that Townsend didn't develop this point to the theological richness that is there (for all BFFs--not just cross-sex). But then again, there is so little theological reflection among evangelical theologians on the divine-human relationships through the lens of divine friendship. You too, may have noticed that evangelical theologians-pastors have no theology--and therefore no deep friendship wisdom--of two opposite-sex best friends.

I was an evangelical for twenty-something years before I discovered a community (not officially organized) of theologians, therapists, spiritual directors, and pastors who see friendship with God as the center or foundation of Christian life. Moses was called God's friend. The Bible itself points us to language identifying God as a friend. All the attributes that we assign to the best of friendships--kindness, generosity, loyalty, patience, tenderness, pleasure, delight, reverence, joy, creativity, compassion, and everlasting love we experience in God's friendship. We taste in God's friendship. We discover in friendship with God.

Not only that, but if we contemplatively walk through many features of the Gospel story via the lens of God's friendship presence, two friends--yes, a female friend and a male friend--may mutually become attentive to those features in the course of their special friendship bond: new life, ongoing and deeper revelations of God's unfathomable love, freedom, forgiveness, the gift of the Holy Spirit, eternal life, tenderness of God, God's beauty, reconciliation, and justice, and so much more. The Story includes the richness of knowing God as friend who has prepared "what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard."

The Gospel story offers an unending Fountain of friendship wisdom for opposite-sex best friends.

The Unplumbed Depths of Friendship Wisdom

I was delighted to discover that Townsend opened the door wide open to two friends enjoying what I call the unplumbed depths of friendship wisdom: we can know and enjoy more than one BFF simultaneously. Let that soak in. This insight flies into the face of so many sacred cows floating around concerning "best friends."

First and foremost, it's almost impossible for many Christians to be open to opposite-sex best friends because of the narrow assumption/expectation that God has only one best opposite-sex best friend for us and that's called marriage. This is a huge psychological hurdle for us to unlearn as married individuals or singles. Perhaps this is the biggest hurdle for why evangelical egalitarians have no theology for platonic cross-gender BFFs.

A second sacred cow expectation/assumption we have to unlearn is that a best friend is a psychological "perfect match" for us. As we all know or have heard, this is sacred in popular assumptions about best friends pop psychology. You know, stories about meeting one's BFF where there was "instant connection." Or, where two friends instant "click." Or your perfect match friend "gets me" in ways others haven't. There is this magical, beyond words connection.

What makes this assumption so popular is because we do meet best friends like this. No doubt about it. There are a number of stories reinforcing this perfect match scenario portraying best friend soulmate connection. It is totally healthy and good for us to enjoy these kinds of perfect match connections.

But friendship wisdom suggests this is too narrow and too limiting for BFFs. For those of us who are married and those of us who are single. What I have loved about hungering after opposite-sex friendship wisdom after fifteen years is discovering psychological-theological wisdom beyond pop psychology! Townsend's book, points in the direction of not settling for pop psychology in best friends forever.

Friendship wisdom directs us toward a liberating psychological maturity--unplumbed depths of best friend connections. Are all meaningful, deep best friend connections exclusively contained within a perfect match connection? For many healthy psychological reasons, it is good for us to move on from this sacred cow.

Therapist F. Diane Barth in her book on female friendship posits that many deep connections in friendship "come not from a single kind of relationship" (I Know How You Feel). Not only that, but there is the whole thing about stages of life and psychological development. Friendship wisdom points to the fact that two people can mature into sharing deep connection even though they are not a perfect match as friends.

What if we don't start out defining BFFs as this psychological twin-like, perfect match description or experience? Watch this, a best friend, suggests Townsend, "is someone who ideally has become a high-priority relationship for you that you will invest in personally. You will find yourself wanting to know her even at deeper levels. You'll find a growing and great well of love for her inside you, and become fiercely loyal to and protective of your time together, for it is vital to you both." What about that word, "forever?" Best friends, forever?

Again, friendship wisdom points us not too unhealthy clinging, manipulation to stay stuck-together, but toward a maturing, deep liking and knowing of one another as friends of the heart. As we mature in sharing our joys, sorrows, celebrations, significant events, and the insignificant details of our lives, we discover that we don't want this friendship to end.

We don't want the shared intimacy to have an expiration date. Townsend, "This is someone who is so important and special to me that they are in my Hall of Fame. This is a person who I want to be a permanent part of my life." The criteria for this importance is not necessarily a perfect match spiritual frequency. Instead, it is a learning a spiritual frequency-wisdom of a different kind toward a different kind of friend.

The pop psychology of perfect match scenario only offers this radio where all the buttons are tuned into one spiritual frequency only. It's just my two cents, but I think there is an unexpected beauty awaiting for all of us who are hungering for friendship wisdom; the shared beauty of diverse spiritual frequencies defining opposite-sex best friends.

Pop psychology for both married and single has been to steer us toward opposite-sex best friends scenarios as either perfect match or psychologically inferior, second-best relationships or connections. Too often pop psychology presents to us immature or shallow either-ors: either you encounter or find your perfect match best friend or settle for isolation, loneliness, and alienation.

We are going to meet sincere, well-meaning friends who are so tuned into that either-or frequency they either are stuck in that narrow script with their one and only best friend or they are stuck trying to find a perfect match. It feels impossible for them to grow and mature in deep, vulnerable, beautiful closeness with friends who are different from them.

But the power of opposite-sex best friends calls us to unplumbed depths of friendship wisdom.

]]>Dan BrennanWed, 10 Oct 2018 06:21:59 -0500Post-Hybels: Friendship and Woman's Flourishing Beyond Willow Creek https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/09/post-hybels-friendship-and-womans-flourishing-beyond-willow-creek-.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/09/post-hybels-friendship-and-womans-flourishing-beyond-willow-creek-.htmlI’ve got one more post in me regarding Missio Alliance’s August 13th link, 7 Questions All Pastors Need to Ask Themselves Post-Hybels I wanted to see if one (or more!) of the self-awareness questions was going to explore friendship as...I’ve got one more post in me regarding Missio Alliance’s August 13th link, 7 Questions All Pastors Need to Ask Themselves Post-Hybels I wanted to see if one (or more!) of the self-awareness questions was going to explore friendship as a foundation for egalitarian ministry. I was hoping to see if one of the self-awareness questions was going to explore mutual flourishing in friendship between the sexes in pastoral relationships.

I was immediately curious to see if they would start asking questions beyond the common evangelical “avoiding evil” strategy when it came to friendships between the sexes. I wondered if any of these self-aware questions was going to address the unacknowledged baggage of the evangelical purity culture still lingering among evangelical egalitarians. I was hoping for some soul-searching questions touching on the good news of sharing of egalitarian power and the flourishing of friendship between a man and woman with no one else present.

When I first read Chicago Tribune article came out in March, one of my first reactions was that I was shocked to see Hybels—and Willow Creek leadership supporting him—throwing Nancy Beach under the bus. I didn’t know the other women in the article but I knew Beach.

I didn’t know her personally but I knew she was a longstanding pastor at Willow with high credibility. I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes and having one of the most powerful evangelical egalitarian men in all the world, call you a liar. This was one of the most disturbing things to me in the hours and days after reading that first Tribune article.

Push the fast-forward button to August 13. After the New York Times posted new allegations from former executive assistant, Pat Baranowski, at least ten women had come forward. Missio Alliance publishes these seven questions by respected evangelical pastor Rich Villodas. "All pastors” need to ask after the entire meltdown/resignation of Willow Creek pastors and elders.

For me, these seven questions reflect this sub-culture's (Missio Alliance, CBE, The Junia Project, etc.) lack of self-awareness and social awareness among egalitarians about power and friendship in the highest level of leadership. It seemed to me that none of these seven get into the heart of the relationships Bill Hybels would have had with each of these women.

These questions don’t even begin to explore long-term mutual flourishing between male pastors and the individual women he calls friends—whether they be a fellow co-pastor, his executive assistant, a woman in his community, or someone else on his staff. Looking at this through a friendship lens, these women were friends of God. They deserved valuable, priceless, Christ-centered flourishing that Hybels never modeled to them. Back then, and up until now where he has never taken on the responsibility to attune to their personal flourishing.

For me, these questions reflect the biggest weakness in egalitarian theology among evangelicals: following the Bill Hybels-Willow Creek model for years: they lack a theology of friendship between a man and woman, alone together, flourishing as friends. Thirty years into Willow Creek egalitarianism. Years of Global Leadership Summit have not produced a theology of what it means for a man and woman to flourish together as friends, together alone. These egalitarians never joyfully put forward a theology of gospel friendship in either a full-length book nor a series of blog articles inquisitive men or women who are not evangelical could turn to for inspiration, hope, and flourishing.

Of course, prior to March of this year, Willow Creek egalitarianism was the best, safest, and healthiest thing going in the evangelical community! Bill Hybels was the leader for the annual Global Leadership Summit. Even though he never championed intimate friendships (shared relational power) between men and women, evangelical egalitarian women from all over the world looked to him as a beacon and guide for what healthy egalitarianism looked like in churches.

Even his daughter, Shauna Niequist, a popular author, would write eloquently about friendship in her books but she, like her father, could not embrace the gift and discipline of gospel friendship where sexual attraction might emerge.

Now on this side of the Willow Creek meltdown, we know why. Shauna did not observe her own father model a radiant, healthy flourishing close friendships with the sexes.

Willow Creek egalitarian “fruit” has been hunkered down in “avoid the appearance of evil” strategy. This was a mixture of following the Billy Graham rule and asserting safety/wisdom (for both men and women) in numbers. Authentic, mature, healthy connection happened between men and women in the safety of numbers bigger than two either in small groups or church gatherings. Part of “avoiding evil” has been the unacknowledged baggage of these egalitarian leaders still steeped in the evangelical purity culture which is loaded with toxic masculinity. We’ll get into that in a moment.

But ask any woman right now who is not an evangelical but an egalitarian—a follower of Jesus or an agnostic—if she would feel safe going to Willow Creek. Or she would feel safe within the evangelical egalitarian culture. Ask any morally sensitive egalitarian woman who has not been a part of the evangelical purity culture (including egalitarians) if she would feel safe immersing herself into that culture now.

One of the first women to inspire me and guide me to enthusiastically embrace flourishing in intimate cross-sex friendship was feminist theologian Cristina Traina. She was indeed a theologian. She was a committed feminist. But she was not an evangelical. She was never a part of the Willow Creek egalitarian sub-culture. As a Catholic ethicist, she inspired me to see that avoiding evil, or the minimalist strategy of do no harm, was woefully insufficient for mutual flourishing.

Love, she argued, promoted flourishing. Flourishing?? I imagine for some, “flourishing” sounds too abstract, nerdy, or academic. Out of touch with everyday life. For others, flourishing is an over-used word. Still, for others flourishing sounds open-ended fraught with too many loose ends and too many slippery slopes.

It’s impossible of course, to dive into what full flourishing in opposite-sex friendship looks like in a blog post. But she helped me to see there were virtues of one might call a positive psychology for shared relational power between men and women as friends when no else is around.

In the last ten years, I have longed for an egalitarian blogger or author with a “platform” (has a largely trusted audience-following a book publisher would crave for) to exude or relish about flourishing in an opposite-sex friendship. There has been no Cristina Perez joyfully claiming the egalitarian delight of having “friendship dates” with her long-time male friend even though both are married. There has been no Judith Orloff like evangelical female therapist gladly claiming intimate friendship with men.

There has been no Emma Thompson extolling the power of intimate trust with a male colleague in their friendship. There has been no highlighting the exuberance of a Leonardo DiCaprio-Kate Winslet kind of dyadic friendship among egalitarian leaders-pastors. There has been no Connie Zweig boasting of her intimate affinity and coffee dates with her male colleague even though they were happily married.

I could list other examples but what all these immediate examples share is this robust, radiant flourishing of an upward spiral of emotions shared between these opposite-sex friends who are therapists, authors, judges-lawyers, college professors, actors-actresses. All of the examples of long-term positive flourishing cross-sex friendships.

I don’t know now if I am connecting dots for you all, but these examples are powerful positive disruptions to the unacknowledged baggage of the evangelical purity culture among egalitarians. I specifically highlighted professional women who are all egalitarians but not evangelical egalitarians. In the evangelical sub-culture (Missio Alliance, The Junia Project, CBE, etc.) no professional woman who is married or single is joyfully permitted to claim deep positive emotions—exuberance, ecstasy, excess vitality, glowing radiance, or particular specialness—with another professional male colleague over their connection being alone, together.

Professional women who are evangelical egalitarians must be compliant with the unacknowledged, unaddressed shadows within the evangelical purity culture where toxic masculinity lurks right around the corner. It’s unacceptable for them to post physically close cheek-to-cheek pictures (like we saw with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) on FB as they meet with an opposite-sex colleague alone in an office, or at Starbucks or in a shared solitude kind of setting with no one else around. They can of course post deep affectionate pictures on social media of their female friends.

“Joy,” writes clinical psychologist Chris Meadows, “is the emotion which comes when one has grasped a good or fulfilled a strong desire that is crucial to a person’s own flourishing, the by-product of fulfilling his or her deepest yearnings. Invariably it comes to us without planning or effort, but in a situation which is a seed-bed for its bursting forth from the beauty of human relationships and nature. The experience of joy is a fundamental response to human possibility.”

In the evangelical sub-culture, professional women are not allowed to flourish with exuberant joy with deep gratitude, deep enthusiasm over an intimate dyadic friendship with a male colleague or trusted friend. They have to be compliant to the dictates of unexamined toxic masculinity within egalitarian leadership in seminaries and churches. Human flourishing—the shared relational power—in the dyadic quality of one-on-one friendship with the opposite sex has never matured or been liberated to mature in the evangelical sub-culture. They cannot exercise a woman's flourishing in the presence of another man without needing their husband to be hovering anxiously around.

In the evangelical purity culture, it is not just the risk of sex for a professional woman (or man) but it’s the ever-present pull of a negative cycle of emotions that will entrap her or her male colleague. If God is an egalitarian God, God is not pro-female flourishing in female-male spiritual friendships if you ponder the "fruit" of Willow Creek egalitarian power. I discovered outside the evangelical sub-culture that female flourishing—not just surviving in a male-centered community, not just “getting by” with “safe boundaries”—but a robust sense of female agency exercising self-awareness, discerning openness, relational maturity, emotional intelligence, and a wholeheartedness toward flourishing. Full stop. Imagine that! Women flourishing beyond the evangelical egalitarian purity sub-culture norms.

Love that promotes flourishing.

Perhaps evangelical egalitarians are reluctant to admit there is already a substantial conversation happening between pastors about power, sexuality, flourishing, love, and friendship. Cristina Traina gets into the heart of these issues (unlike any evangelical egalitarian book or blogs associated with Missio Alliance, the CBE, or The Junia Project) in two books for pastors. One is Professional Sexual Ethics: A Holistic Ministry Approach and the other is Soft Shepherd or Almighty Pastor? Power and Pastoral Care. I highly recommend both books as starters for a deeper egalitarian conversation happening outside the purity culture.

Intimate Prayer, Friendship, and Woman’s Flourishing

In the past sixteen years, I have had three long-term, intentional friendships with women where intimate prayer with and for one another was a part of friendship. One of those friendships, we are still intimately praying with and for each other after sixteen years! In another friendship, we started praying in 2008 together and it, too, is still powerfully alive, healthy, and flourishing. The other spiritual friendship lasted 9 years.

I will camp out here for the moment, just because I am comfortable in my own skin after praying alone together with a number of female friends over sixteen years. But understand I could make this point for a wide range of spiritual disciplines or practices: lectio divina, sabbath, solitude, hospitality, attentiveness—you name the discipline and practice—evangelical egalitarian pastors and theologians have not been on the frontlines as champions of mutual flourishing in the discipline of spiritual friendships.

Katelyn Beaty is a powerful voice for evangelical women. In a follow-up article after the Willow Creek meltdown, she felt it necessary for evangelicals to explore power: “But I’m not sure Willow Creek can honestly evaluate itself without having to completely recast the way it operates as a church. The Hybels story is, of course, about sex — how sexual desire, left unchecked, damages relationships, marriages and entire ministries. But it is, at a far deeper level, about power: how individuals wield it and how institutions protect it.”

One of her suggestions was, “Denominations should use vigorous, thorough psychological testing to weed out leaders who for various reasons can’t be trusted with that much power over people’s lives.”

Now, perhaps that is the way to go. But it doesn’t do justice to address mutual flourishing in cross-gender friendship with ordinary non-pastoral folk like me, or half the professional women I named earlier. Kate Winslet, Cristina Perez, Emma Thompson to name a few professional women who have discovered flourishing in intimate flourishing with male friends. Long-termintimate friendship flourishing.

It may come as a surprise to egalitarian evangelicals who have been immersed in the ethics and psychology of the purity culture to know there are women outside the culture who exercise their full agency in discerning full flourishing. They are not just dupes for sentimental gush in these cross-gender friendships.

Ever since I came across Cristina Traina’s argument that love promotes flourishing (probably around ten years ago), that has profoundly opened my eyes and shaped the way I pray for my female friend’s flourishing in their intimate hearing (no one else around).

I have known the joy and flourishing of mutual praying alone with female friends including female pastors. When we are friends of God, we pray for each other’s flourishing—obviously many times not even saying the specific word. In praying for each of my female friends over the years in their hearing, my attentiveness has expanded.

At the heart of those prayers had/has been my desire for my female friend’s flourishing. Not just surviving in a male-centered, male privileged world/communities, but flourishing. Not just “getting by” but flourishing—abundant life, well-being, delight, fullness, beauty, fullness of their human potential in relationships, voice, vocation. One could say that my theological telos of women’s flourishing has been radically altered as I have prayed with and for a female friend, alone, together over the course of days, weeks, months, and years.

Joining together in prayer with and for my female friends stirred a desire for abundant life and well-being in multiple contexts and in the changing seasons of their lives. But the ongoing and deepening desire in my prayers for them to see them flourish opened my awareness to larger social issues they and women were facing.

When evangelical egalitarians proclaim through their silence and avoidance that power and friendship don’t mix, how could strong women like Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Judith Orloff, Cristina Perez ever be curious or attracted to remaining, unaddressed toxic masculinity within an evangelical purity culture?

Intercessory prayer writes evangelical theologian Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, “requires of us a willing attentiveness to how others in our communities and world are affected by such things as violence, economic instability, unfair practices, discrimination.”

She continues, “Intercessory prayer puts before God and other hearers the good and well-being of persons, believing that God is just as concerned about them as God is about us. Prayer draws us outward, and in doing so, it draws us into greater intimacy with those with whom and for whom we pray, perhaps even prompting us to act as an answer to prayer. If we see intercessory prayer as a form of speaking out for others, the connections with speaking out as an act of solidarity become clearer. Speaking out for others in public forums is a way of making visible what might be invisible, ignored, forgotten, or unseen in our contexts. It focuses on the good of others and appeals to hearers that the impact of our decisions and actions on others be noticed and taken seriously. It lifts up God’s desires for justice and contributes to speaking this kind of justice into existence in our communities by interceding for those whose life circumstances are constrained by our unjust and uncaring actions.”

Boy, if that’s the case, why aren’t we hearing more rich stories, radiant stories of special, close friendships, and shared history narratives from evangelical male and female pastors expressing heartfelt thanks about their intimate spiritual friendships with each other? Intimate prayers of mutual flourishing for their friendship and for woman’s flourishing?

]]>Dan BrennanTue, 04 Sep 2018 10:39:42 -0500Post-Hybels: The Dilemma for Evangelical Egalitarians Part 1 https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/08/post-hybels-the-dilemma-for-evangelical-egalitarians-part-1-.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/08/post-hybels-the-dilemma-for-evangelical-egalitarians-part-1-.htmlScrolling down my Facebook feed last Monday my eyes came across a new link by Missio Alliance: 7 Questions All Pastors Need to Ask Themselves Post-Hybels by Rich Villodas. That immediately grabbed my attention. I saw who the writer was,...Scrolling down my Facebook feed last Monday my eyes came across a new link by Missio Alliance: 7 Questions All Pastors Need to Ask Themselves Post-Hybels by Rich Villodas. That immediately grabbed my attention. I saw who the writer was, and I thought maybe this could offer a significant breakthrough. I don’t know Rich Villodas personally, but I follow him on Twitter and he’s had some good tweets. He has become an evangelical pastor with a voice in social media.

Was Missio Alliance finally going to offer some deep egalitarian wisdom for pastors post-Hybels? I was hoping for a Missio Alliance post I could get excited about and share the link. I wondered if these questions would really probe into the evangelical egalitarian dilemma post-Hybels. I would like nothing more than to link some great follow-up posts that reflect deep friendship wisdom from the Missio Alliance on this side of Hybels. It’s almost impossible to overstate the dilemma/crisis for evangelicals at this hour.

I have a great respect for pastors and theologians hanging out at Missio Alliance. I attend a Missio Alliance church. I love our church. We have had a significant number of cross-gender friendship conversations over the past ten years. We have worked through a number of power issues in cross-gender friendships—in leadership and community. I feel incredibly blessed to be at Life on the Vine. I have the utmost respect for current pastors Ty Grigg and Juliet Liu and Geoff Holsclaw. I cherish them as leaders.

But I also know Missio Alliance as a national organization has never been on the frontlines (that is, it has never used its influential power in leadership) for helping men and women become more aware of power and cross-gender friendships. More to the point, it has steered clear of shared power—ecclesial, relational, coercive, socio-cultural, spiritual, and personal—between a woman and a man alone, together who are not married to one another. Including co-pastors in the same church. As I mentioned in my March 29th post, google “spiritual intimacy between a man and a woman” and you will never end up at a Missio Alliance blog nor will you end up in any of the blogs by their recognized voices.

So when my eyes came across this universal claim “all pastors” I wondered if this was going to be a breakthrough post for Missio Alliance. These were the questions put forth by Villodas:

As a pastor, am I living in the truth? Are there any areas in my life where I’m not living with integrity?

Do I have friendships that help me face my dark side?

Am I submitting myself to authority willingly, joyfully, and transparently?

What are the limits (time, energy, power, money) I’m currently violating?

As a pastor, where do I feel entitled?

Do I have seasons of therapy to grow in self-awareness?

If married, does my spouse have space to share with the leadership of our church how things truly are at home?

Much to my disappointment, there wasn’t anything deeply egalitarian about this post. Ed Stetzer, for example, could have written that post! Don’t misunderstand me. These are good questions. Stetzer is an evangelical leader with integrity. But as a Southern Baptist, he’s never made any top ten list for pastors who fully support female pastors or strong egalitarian relationships in the local church.

Or, I am quite sure Bill Hybels himself could have been on board with the same questions before March. Remember before the Tribune article in March, Hybels was one of the most highly respected evangelical egalitarians in the world. He was the voice of the annual Global Leadership Summit where I know thousands of female pastors, female therapists, and female leaders trekked each year. He had so many books out about servant leadership, egalitarian wisdom, humility of heart, transparency in marriage.

He was a fully respected leader who had created this egalitarian culture within Willow Creek. Before March, any female leader could have bought his book, Authenticity: Being Honest with God and Others. They could have read, “Authenticity means consistency—between words and actions, between claimed values and actual priorities. Inauthenticity occurs when we claim to be one thing, but prove to be something else.”

Or they could have picked up his book, Simplify, “What inner hunger are you feeding that should be fed in healthier ways? If this type of reflecting digging has you stumped, ask a trusted friend, or a Christian counselor to help you gain insight.”

Or, they could read this in Simplify: “I write in my journal, asking myself hard questions about my actions, my words, my relationships, my character.” Or in the same book, they would have read Hybels’ list of red flags in choosing close friends. In this book, he talks about betrayal of close friends. He talks about experiencing “life-shattering injustices.”

Both of these books give a lot of spiritual direction toward a pastor or leader asking the kind of questions Villodas suggests we ask. When I turned to this Missio Alliance blog post claiming all pastors need to ask these questions on this side of Hybels, I was hoping to see if evangelicals were becoming more aware of their own subcultural blind spots about power and friendships between a man and a woman. More specific, it has been a subcultural taboo for egalitarians to face power in close personal relationships with the opposite sex even if the man and woman share pastoral power.

Taboo: Power and Friendship

In my journey of thirsting for deep friendship wisdom between men and women, I discovered many male theologians (take your pick, complementarian or egalitarian) who could communicate the theories of atonement but none who practiced an intentional willingness to embrace an uncertainty, a vulnerable openness with a close female friend in spiritual companionship or friendship--alone, together. Deep, heartfelt, treasured friendships between the sexes are nowhere to be seen or out in the open for egalitarian theorists. How could it be that there has been no good news emanating from these men in power? Why aren’t we hearing the grammar of unspeakable depth and variety from these theologians who write about mutuality and love? You know, like, “Friendship between the sexes is too good to be true. It is more than you can imagine. It is one of God’s greatest gifts. My close friendship with ______is priceless.” How could it be that we don’t have male evangelical theorists proclaiming that Christ lovingly invites us to an egalitarian feast, to an intimate fullness we could experience, know, and cherish in cross-sex friendship?

Power and friendship between men and women—particularly men and women being alone, together—has not been a good mix or a virtuous mix for egalitarian theorists in Missio Alliance. Of course, if you know anything about patriarchy and female invisibility in friendship, you know this “bad mix” mirrors male invulnerability, male detachment, male entitlement over women in one-on-one relationships. Evangelical men (including some of the most influential egalitarian theologians/bloggers with the largest audience platforms) believe they are entitled to make the rules over women in personal relationships. Entitlement (including anxious fears about being alone with a woman for fill-in-the-blank reasons) is exercising power over women in all areas of friendship.

For those of you who know me, I have been more than happy to highlight or link stories of a man and woman delighting in friendship. I have been waiting for Missio Alliance to see when or if they were ever going to move beyond the Bill Hybels Willow Creek egalitarian culture. Female ordination—not healthy friendships between men and women—was the driving force for thirty years behind that culture. Shared power in friendship—alone together was never on the radar screen. Or it put it another way, spiritual intimacy between a male leader and a female leader, alone together. This is quite easy to verify. Google those words or language like that and you’ll never find links to Missio Alliance, Scot McKnight or David Fitch.

I was wondering if egalitarians were going to wrestle with subculture’s utter failure to come forth with a positive theology of a man and woman being alone, together. But first they would have to begin to show some awareness of the biggest voices with the biggest audience platforms for evangelical publishers have chosen old patriarchal standbys of male detachment, male entitlement, and ego power to stay clear of being alone with women.

]]>Dan BrennanTue, 21 Aug 2018 16:08:33 -0500Review: Why Can't We be Friends? Part 3https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/07/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-part-3.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/07/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-part-3.htmlI have said some wonderfully positive things about Aimee Byrd’s new book on male-female friendship, Why Can’t We Be Friends? Go here for part one. Here for part two. Now, this last post, I am diving deeper into ecclesial intimacy....I have said some wonderfully positive things about Aimee Byrd’s new book on male-female friendship, Why Can’t We Be Friends? Go here for part one. Here for part two.

Now, this last post, I am diving deeper into ecclesial intimacy. I am grateful for her book. I hope it generates a deeper conversation about ecclesial intimacy among egalitarians and complementarians.

On the one hand, she’s reflecting on a platonic closeness between men and women that very few egalitarians have embraced. On the other hand, she’s reflecting complete detachment from men and women sharing intimate power in church leadership.

Reading her book brought up so many mixed emotions for me.

I was thrilled that she was unafraid to explore platonic intimacy.

But every time Aimee mentioned “church” or “ecclesiology” asserting her particular views, I couldn’t help but think of women who faced so many ecclesial-emotional obstacles to follow Christ in their gifting and calling. I pictured the face of every female friend I know who is a pastor.

The confusion continued when popular blogger Tim Fall posted an extremely positive blog post in the FB group “Biblical Christian Egalitarians” without offering any serious critique or pushback on this committed complementarian’s book. Every egalitarian who reads her book should have Tara Beth Leach’s chapter on “The Imposter Syndrome” open as they process Byrd’s book.

Tim’s positive, generous blog toward her book mentioned her theology without ever wrestling with any doubts about her theology of friendship between men and women. I have a great respect for Tim. But she uses the word “church” over 200 times in her book. Each time, its with the understanding she’s a committed complementarian.

I can appreciate that Tim and Aimee may be friends. I have female friends who are complementarians, also. So, hats off to Tim in showing his unconditional positive regard for her book and her ecclesial intimacy.

But I don’t think it does justice—not just a metaphor—full justice toward women who desire an ecclesial intimacy that Byrd says is off limits to them. She has no place for women and shared intimate power at the ecclesial leadership level. She never once has counsel for women in “office.” This is for “men only” (156). She has no space in her ecclesiology for shared or equal intimate power (friendship) in leadership between the sexes.

As I read through her ecclesial lens, I thought about female friends I have prayed for who were processing their interest in becoming pastors. I thought about my female friends who are pastors who I have prayed with and for. I thought about so many gifted female leaders I have met who would be forbidden to enter into Aimee’s vision of ecclesial intimacy.

In fact, when Byrd gets to make a case about identifying “false siblings” in her church, one wonders where that puts women in her church who believe God has called them to be ordained.

But this is where it gets tricky and messy for her. Can we just neatly draw lines between personal intimate friendships and an egalitarian ecclesial intimacy—meaning shared intimate power between women and men in leadership?

When Aimee dives into “anthropology” at the beginning of the book and then throughout, she never defines “intimacy” or “healthy” at that point or through the book. She lays out an anthropology, ecclesiology, Christology, and eschatology. But she never defines intimacy or healthy.

When she approaches anthropology, she suggests that the question, Who am I? “affects our relationships with both men and women.” But what about the woman who is asking this question about desires for ordained leadership when she has close complementarian male friends? Complementarian male pastor or elder like the elder Aimee refers to in her book?

If “intimacy” is merely spiritual closeness with no sexual intent, personal relationships are so vulnerable to anxious pressure to conform to kingdom or church values. For the sake of “harmony” in the church, a woman’s desires might be squelched for the sake of “unity.”

Suddenly, we are talking about churches and their cultures of intimacy. Institutional intimacy powerfully is shaping anthropology—a woman’s desires at the most intimate level of vocation.

Byrd never explores the meaning of egalitarian intimacy—where there is personal and authentic power to process one’s own calling as a personal freedom and a part of female identity.

One of the most surprising things I discovered as a white male once-complementarian-turned-egalitarian, was the hard challenge to define spiritual intimacy between men and women. What is “holy intimacy” between men and women? Is it just spiritual closeness that does not welcome lust? Or sexless vulnerability? Relational or vocational proximity? Is it just about displaying a “servant’s heart when you are in the close proximity of someone? Or is does it involve mutuality? A sense of shared power between men and women in the relationship?

One of the things I loved about her book was her strong engagement of Freud as a block to personal intimacy—friendships between the sexes. She is miles ahead of anything Christianity Today has put out, IVP has put out, and some of the most well-known egalitarian bloggers.

But her glass ceiling for intimacy between men and women takes so much back. I stand with Byrd in looking through the spiritual sibling lens as a means of encouraging deep platonic love between men and women. I used that lens quite frequently in the first ten years of my journey in friendships with women.

However, it became increasingly clear to me that a dependence upon the siblings lens only takes one so far in the conversation about platonic intimacy. Think of how many brother-sister relationships throughout church history that did not empower women to shatter the glass ceiling. Think about how many brother-sister relationships that thrived on closeness within benevolent sexism.

She writes, “There is no hierarchy in friendship. This may be another reason why friendship between the sexes is less likely in some environments that hold to female subordination in all cross-gender relationships. God’s design was to produce women not only as sexual partners, haven-makers, and baby mamas to men, but also as friends to walk side by side with them.” (pg 100).

That’s awesome stuff. High-five kind of stuff. But then I wondered how her elder friend Dave would walk side by side with a young woman like a Tara Beth Leach who felt a call from God to preach the gospel? I wondered how Aimee’s own husband would walk side by side with one of my close female friends who has been tenderly processing whether or not she should pursue ordination—for several years now. Could he or Dave be tenderly open to walking side by side with them in a spirit of true friendship support and discernment or would their vision of ecclesial intimacy exert relational power over these women?

Here are some of my thoughts after reading Aimee’s book. For me, differentiation of self helps bring some clarity.

Differentiation of Self and Personal Friendships

Differentiation of self could help explain why Aimee is more comfortable with friendship intimacy than many egalitarians I have read. Her theological reflection on personal friendship between the sexes easily surpasses what many egalitarians have expressed on their blogs or in their books.

As a psychological developmental theory, Aimee could possibly be more differentiated than many egalitarian men or women in personal relationships with men. At one point in the book, she expresses she has never felt held back by her brothers. She’s really comfortable with men because of her positive background with her brothers in her family.

When I began to develop cross-gender friendships, I was a complementarian. In my closest friendships with women, the biggest questions they were processing in our developing friendships were not questions about church leadership.

In all my close friendships with women, we were all complementarians at that point. My experience is living proof that one can be a complementarian and know deep closeness in cross-gender friendships. So with Tim, I can give a hearty thumbs up for her rich theological reflection on friendships that even egalitarian men and women should ponder. Her differentiation of self goes deeper in this than Halee Gray Scott’s book in Dare Mighty Things.

Differentiation of Self and Ecclesial Intimacy

However, I cannot give an unqualified endorsement of the book asTim did. I gave her positive review on Amazon but I also mentioned my “quibbles” with her complementarian convictions. Aimee’s book opens a wide door of questions about cultures of intimacy within churches and the fullness of a woman’s self (going back to anthropology and the meaning of egalitarian definitions of self and intimacy).

At the end of her book, Aimee writes, “Please read what I’ve said with Christian discernment, charity, and maturity. I am not calling for some kind of new movement within the church in which men and women begin flaunting their friendships. I want nothing to do with that. We don’t need a movement.”

Why not?

Any serious study of friendships will reveal how two friends came together with fresh curiosity, inspiration, courage, and boldness to do something new, or do something that was just, or do something that inspired many others. Why limit friendship? Well, it is great that Aimee’s desire for the fullness of who she is has taken her to write this book. But what if another’s woman’s desire—the desire for fullness of self wants to be friends with men as co-pastors?

Back when I was taking my cross-gender friendships public like just doing an ordinary thing like posting pictures on the FB wall about a canoeing with a female friend or going for dinner, I received quite a bit of flak from both complementarians and egalitarians. I was told by both that I was “flaunting” out in the open.

It’s no simple thing to nurture a culture of ecclesial intimacy in an evangelical purity culture.

I also remember when I was going public I was in an egalitarian church at the time but they had no space—the pastors had no relational space for deep friendships between men and women.

It was not an easy transition to open up space for what I am calling an egalitarian ecclesial intimacy—men and women sharing intimate power as co-pastors, co-leaders. I am forever grateful I chose to come out of the evangelical purity culture. If I had waited for popular egalitarian authors or bloggers with a platform to model deep friendships between the sexes out in the open, I’d still be waiting.

I am deeply grateful I stayed at the church. I am deeply grateful for the ecclesial intimacy I know and enjoy in this church now—something that is utterly missing from Aimee’s book.

]]>Dan BrennanTue, 03 Jul 2018 06:31:07 -0500Shared Solitude: Top Ten Books for Men and Women Experiencing God's Closeness in Friendshiphttps://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/07/shared-solitude-top-ten-books-for-men-and-women-experiencing-gods-closeness-in-friendship.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/07/shared-solitude-top-ten-books-for-men-and-women-experiencing-gods-closeness-in-friendship.htmlAnother top ten list. I had been alone with female friends hundreds of times including several road trips over the course of thirteen years when I came upon a particular phrase by sociologist Maria Markus that powerfully resonated with me....Another top ten list.

I had been alone with female friends hundreds of times including several road trips over the course of thirteen years when I came upon a particular phrase by sociologist Maria Markus that powerfully resonated with me. It was like one of those “aha” moments connecting a lot of dots. During all these experiences I have had with female friends where no one else was physically present it never, ever occurred to me to describe what we were doing with the two words Markus brought to my attention.

Maybe I am slow on the uptake, but she took me by the hand, as it were, and showed me the unfathomable depths of two cross-sex friends opening their selves to God’s boundless heart with no one else around.

The phrase?

Shared solitude.

For all those years it seemed utterly foreign to connect solitude with intimate friendship. Perhaps the biggest block for me to see intimacy as shared solitude was my impression that solitude was first and foremost a discipline of silence. Although there were plenty of silent moments or silent occasions in my friendships, solitude as silence could not even begin to describe the wide range of intimacy with my female friends in the past thirteen years.

My second biggest impression about solitude was that it required isolation. That would also rule out all kinds of shared experiences with female friends where the language of desires, hopes, fears, frustrations, dreams, musings. and mundane reflections were front and center in our connections.

These two impressions about solitude discouraged me from ever making the between solitude and intimacy with my female friends. We prayed together. We ate together. We watched movies. We had all kinds of conversations; short, long, intense, vulnerable, lighthearted, joyful, provocative, brainstorming, tender, and mundane. We played together. We went to U2 concerts. We took road trips. Spoke at the Wild Goose Festival on two different occasions. The dyadic quality of my connections with my female friends involved being alone . . .together.

So, it never dawned on me to consider the connection between intimacy and solitude until I read Maria Markus’ essay, “Can Solitude be Recaptured for the Sake of Intimacy?” She briefly surveyed the history of solitude and how properly conceived, it is not about being cut off the from the world. Solitude was an intentional space for union with God. It was an intentional space for intimacy with God. It was a space for self-reflection for how one engages the world. It was a contemplative orientation where false expectations could be dealt with. Where desires could be engaged and discerned. Where compulsions could be named and released. Where union of God could be exquisitely discerned, cherished, and known.

But she was not intending to put forth a Christian view of solitude. Instead, she suggested that with the emergence of modern intimacy, there are two kinds of knowledge simultaneously occurring in a mutually chosen intimate relationship: self-knowledge/self-reflection and a knowing of the other. The self is continuing to expand, evolve, and grow in a mutually respected close relationship. She then proposed intimacy as a sort of a shared solitude where the two people can reflect and grow in their knowledge of engaging the world.

When two people voluntarily choose spiritual, emotional, bodily, and intellectual closeness out of mutual respect, reciprocity, and trust, these two kinds of knowledge are always operating; the friend's intimacy itself forges a sense of shared solitude as to how to engage their relationship and engage themselves. In this intimacy, boundaries of self matter. Self-knowledge expands, grows, deepens, stretches, and flourishes. Alongside this ever-expanding intimate knowing and caring and respecting the other.

This has stuck with me ever since. There is no current robust theology of being alone together with an opposite-sex friend because we have no sense of a man and woman as friends forging this shared solitude, this sense of experiencing God's closeness in friendship with no one else is around. As friends of God, we learn together alone in shared solitude that our Divine Friend doesn't have poor boundaries as our Friend. It's precisely because we learn to know God's intimate nearness as a Friend, that we come to know the unfathomable depths of Divine Friendship indwelling our friendship as we are alone, together!

Now, none of these books directly mention intimate friendships between men and women. Oh, I long for the day when I could say these are the top ten books on cross-gender friendship! But these books have powerfully shaped my deepening awareness and curiosity as to what it means for two cross-gender friends to know the intimate presence of their Divine Friend is nearer to them than their next breath! These are in no particular order except for the first book.

She gets first mention because without her I would have never had the courage to consider becoming close friends with the opposite sex. It was Payne (again, not with any specific, direct application to cross-gender friendship) who inspired to begin practicing the presence of God--to know Christ is me and with me. She also implanted this idea of incarnational closeness--Christ in others and with others. This vivid sense of incarnational closeness inspired me to reach out to opposite sex friends.

Years before #MeToo emerged, I listened to women who had #MeToo stories. I made trusting friendships with some women who had these stories. I have prayed with and for female friends who had #MeToo stories. And they have prayed with and for me. Payne gave me the idea--indirectly--that I could see Christ in other women.

Christian Households by Thomas Breidenthal

A beautiful reflection by an Episcopal priest. The book is twenty years old. What is so powerful about this book first and foremost is his deep desire to see "nearness" redeemed. Written before neuroscience had become popular, he reflects on how in the Incarnation Christ has come to redeem nearness between us. He calls us to learn with a limited number of people what the demands and joys of Christ's nearness that will know no limits in the kingdom of God.

He interprets nearness through the lens of the household (not necessarily nuclear defined) and calls us to live redeemed lives intimately aware and near one another. I can easily see what he claims about nearness through the lens of friendship.

Life Together in Christ by Ruth Haley Barton

This is a book written by a Willow Creek shaped egalitarian. It's about an intentional ongoing opening ourselves to Christ's indwelling presence when we come together in community. So many of the insights she shares in this book are totally applicable to knowing Christ's presence in two-person friendships including cross-gender friendships. She has some beautiful reflections about what can happen if people are able to make healthy choices to stay in relationships when there are differences, disagreements, and conflicts.

Although she never mentions the phrase her book oozes all the ethos of what could be "shared solitude." In fact, her book begins by processing the story of two disciples (two--not, three, or four, or five) walking along the road to Emmaus after Christ had been buried. She has wonderful encouragement to be together to attend to the presence of one another without rushing in to solve the problem, fix the other, or give advice.

In that vein, she also has beautiful direction to receive (not fix, jump in and control, give advice, or pressure) the presence of another and what they are sharing. One of my closest female friends for many years uses "receive" in much the same way Barton uses it here and the way I like to use it. Just this past week, I texted my friend and said that I was praying for her. She texted back saying she was "receiving" my prayers. It blessed my heart! There is this simple and yet profound act in receiving another's full presence in cross-gender friendship.

Part of the reciprocal power in cross-gender friendship is receiving your friend is sharing--what the goodness, the beauty, the ongoing sharing of burdens, delights, fears, and hopes. We can have walls up, we can have boundaries up high and not receive what our friends are pouring into us. And a significant part of Christian friendship between men and women is learning to receive Christ's indwelling presence in our "togetherness."

This is by Jesuit priest and spiritual director Willam Barry. Again, it is not a book directly about two opposite-sex friends. But it is about doing all the inner work to know and experience God's closeness as a Divine Friend. Barry talks about how many Christians perceive God as aloof, distant, out there somewhere on the sidelines. How could God possibly want to be friends with us?

Barry has written several books on discerning and knowing God's closeness in friendship. Many of his insights could are easily transferable to two cross-gender friends experiencing God's closeness in friendship. As his books reveal, there is this intense closeness that we can know as friends of God and it a closeness that is not sexualized but full of beauty, fullness, and healthy union with God.

"Has God given up on the world?. . .You want to feel God's closeness so that you can ask God to help you face your fears about the situation of the world and arrive at a deep belief that God still loves this world. . .I have come to believe the deepest movements of our hearts, when we are touched by the joys and the sorrows of others, reflect the heart of God."

"Neither divine omnipresence nor God's vision of abundant life is a theological abstraction. In this very moment, God wants you to have abundant life in the many aspects of your life. God wants everyone else to have abundant life as well. Concretely speaking, God seeks abundance, wholeness, beauty, and healing in every moment and situation."

He contrasts this with scarcity thinking: "scarcity thinking is guided by practical atheism that implicitly assumes God is absent, unconcerned, or opposed to our flourishing. In contrast, I believe the biblical tradition describes a deeper realism fully cognizant of limitation but open to divine inspiration and energy. It assumes we are never alone; God is with us, and in partnership with other people of faith."

We have no evangelical theology of two opposite-sex friends being together, alone in shared solitude because we have no positive theology of God's between two friends. The evangelical purity culture has banished all the profound life and beauty and healing of God's closeness between two friends. I don't believe God is a theological abstraction for cross-gender friends and this book moves us past all the scarcity thinking that has discouraged two friends from knowing God's closeness together, alone.

"The teaching of Scripture is that God is really present right here, right now. . .So close he can flow in your life from one moment to the next like a river.. . The good news Jesus simply announced was simply this: God has invaded our backyard and is making his presence and power available to anybody who wants him."

For every woman and man who is a beginner as a friend of God to the those who have been friends of God for a long time, this immediate sense of two friends knowing Christ’s friendship is nearer to them than their next breath. Two friends could mutually turn toward God’s nearness at any moment and that could possibly be their defining moment for a lifetime of shared vulnerability, shared caring, shared power, shared prayer.

One prayer. One movie. One meal. One night. One phone call. One road trip. One walk. All of these and more could be the next defining moment for two friends knowing intimacy with God in the heart of their friendship. It is really possible that a man and a woman who are not married to each other could experience God’s intimate nearness—with no one else around—with a simple tuning into being fully present to each other in the moment.

"We go about our day-to-day lives as functional atheists. We may pray and worship God on occasion, but these are “special times,” isolated from our “normal,” secular day-to-day life. So thoroughly are we brainwashed by the secular mind-set that the very suggestion that we could routinely experience the world in a way that includes God strikes us as impossible.

If you’re looking for an explanation why so few contemporary believers experience the fullness of love, joy, peace, and the transforming power that the New Testament promises, I think you’ve just found it. The secular worldview causes us to compartmentalize our life, isolating the “spiritual” from the rest of our experience. Our relationship with God is boxed into special prayer and devotion times along with weekend church services, all of which have little impact on us."

I'm no longer a functional atheist when it comes to the practice of deep friendship between men and women.

"Everything, every person and situation, becomes an occasion for communion with the mystery in the silence of the heart. Alert, attentive, receptive, and responsive. . . it requires an attention to seek and be receptive to the Divine wherever we may be, wherever we may look. . .One of the most fundamental ways to be a mystic in the world is to give yourself the time each day to appreciate what is always before you. . . An orientation to the Sacred makes a foundation on which lasting friendship can be built. Interest in, seeking of, and commitment to the Sacred, the Divine, in whatever form it may assume, provides the ultimate measure of growth in the lives of friends and within friendship itself."

It takes intention--to move out of the evangelical purity culture (assumed as default by both egalitarians and complementarians)--into this moment-by-moment orientation to the Sacred in cross-gender friendship.

"By getting to know Jesus as our friend, we get to know God as God really is. . .The New Testament's open secret is this: As we keep company with Jesus, he leads us into the life and heart of God . . .the gospel invites us into friendship with God. This is a staggering reality."

It is just as much of a staggering reality for two cross-sex friends to know this together, alone.

Drop In by Sarah Harvey Yao

"The beauty of experimenting with present-moment awareness is that you can try it anytime and anywhere. The goal of experimenting is to increase the quality of your attention and observation in any given moment. When you acknowledge presence, you are no longer on autopilot. The moment you bring your attention to and observe fully where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, feeling, or experiencing, you have left the world of unconsciousness and entered the world of presence."

There are, of course, a whole lot more books, I could mention. The problem of narrowing it down to ten is I am going to leave out some great authors or books that have shaped me to hunger for a deeper attentiveness, a deeper attentiveness to an incarnational closeness between a man and woman when no one is around. For too long, we have been immersed in patriarchal thinking, into patriarchal nearness whenever a man and woman were near each other. Patriarchal autopilot. These books have all helped me practice an immediate awareness of shared solitude in cross-gender friendship.

]]>Dan BrennanSun, 01 Jul 2018 18:57:13 -0500Review: Why Can't We Be Friends? Pt 2https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/06/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-pt-2.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/06/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-pt-2.htmlTake it from me, friends. Aimee Byrd's Why Can't We Be Friends is a rich, unflinching, non-anxious exploration of intimate friendships between men and women. On the one hand, it's shocking that it comes from a conservative reformed publisher. On...Take it from me, friends. Aimee Byrd's Why Can't We Be Friendsis a rich, unflinching, non-anxious exploration of intimate friendships between men and women. On the one hand, it's shocking that it comes from a conservative reformed publisher. On the other hand, it's not that shocking in the sense that I had close friendships with women when I was a complementarian.

As a thinker, author, and lover of Christ, Byrd, is an amateur theologian. But don't confuse "amateur" with incompetence or superficiality. Byrd can never, ever be described as superficial. You may disagree with her complementarian convictions but she is no theological lightweight. She loves God, she loves theology and her previous books have sought to help conservative women wrestle with theology in everyday life.

I love it that a committed complementarian has had the courage to boldly go where egalitarians (theologians and pastors) have dreaded to go! Make no mistake about it. When Byrd makes the observation early in her book, "Friendship between men and women is a taboo topic in the evangelical subculture. It makes us uncomfortable," this doesn't just apply to complementarians but to egalitarians also!

Aimee's new book is a beautiful reminder to me how complicated and multifaceted Divine-human intimacy is between men and women. For example, her book is not a surface appeal to the closeness between male and female friends with an anxious, codependent need to always have a spouse nearby like egalitarian pastor Tish Harrison Warren's need in her recent Christianity Today article. This book is not a typical bait-and-switch--promising a positive approach to male-female friendship closeness but then one discovers this fingernail biting need to defend "biblical" marriage. No, Byrd presents a relaxed theological reflection on close friendships between the sexes.

And here is the beautiful paradox of Why Can't We Be Friends?: She delves far deeper into unfathomable depths of Divine-human intimacy between men and women than many evangelical egalitarian books and blogs I have read. We are in 2018. How is that even possible? Byrd is clearly comfortable with churches ordaining men only to preach but she also reveals a deep peace exploring Divine-human intimacy between men and women that far surpasses the comfort level of The Junia Project, CBE, and Missio Alliance. And those are all egalitarian-focused organizations!

Frankly, I have been quite surprised by egalitarian's glaring inattention and snub of friendship between men and women. Let me be more specific. I am referring to evangelical egalitarians. I have been greatly encouraged to see nonevangelical egalitarian women powerfully reflect on healthy cross-gender friendship. I have yet to see an evangelical explore the depths of cross-gender friendship. Scot McKnight's blog, for example--as one of the top egalitarian blogs in the evangelical community--has yet to positively and enthusiastically embrace spiritual intimacy between male and female leaders with the peace that Byrd embodies in the book.

Deep friendships between men and women--where words like very close, best friend, super close, very, very close, BFF, soul friend--are not on the radar screen for evangelical egalitarians. Also, show me on FB pictures of really close affectionate egalitarian friends comfortably and delightfully snuggling up to each other for a friendship selfie. Does cross-gender friendship for evangelical egalitarians mean that detached masculinity is the default posture between two close cross-gender friends? And close, comfortable affectionate delightful and caring touch (a huge attribute in female friendship) is a no, no?

I mentioned detachment. I can't mention that word in this context without bringing up the evangelical purity culture. The same sub-culture Byrd accurately tells us is "uncomfortable" (both egalitarians and complementarians) with male-female friendship is inextricably intertwined with the evangelical purity culture. In this culture, evangelicals have anxiously maintained a strong spiritual and emotional detachment when it comes to friendship sans sex. For my two cents, it is a big reason why evangelical egalitarians have resisted deep friendships between men and women. It has always been "friendship" in the most shallow terms with the unspoken assumption this superficial connection was only good until further notice and then be cut off or dropped just like that.

This makes Aimee Byrd's new book all the more remarkable in my eyes. She courageously is taking a stand in writing this book and seeking to disentangle friendship from this purity culture. Several of her conservative brethren have already criticized her and feared she was embracing liberal elements. To ponder the mystery of Divine-human intimacy between men and woman beyond what evangelical egalitarians have been comfortable with is something I can give thanks for.

Having explored this for many years now, I believe there are a number of entry points for Christians to explore a theology of cross-gender friendship. Byrd chooses one of them and runs with it the entire book. She looks at platonic intimacy through the lens of spiritual siblings. I'm quite familiar with this since I delved into it in my first book. I have maintained for several years now that it is utterly radical to read the New Testament's non-romantic passages about ethics and derive non-romantic meaning and power from them pertaining to cross-gender friends. Many Christian same gender friendship books do that all the time and no one thinks twice about it. Non-romantic passages like, you know, all the "one another" passages.

Byrd delves into these non-romantic passages through the lens of spiritual siblings. You know what? Because she has close sibling relationships in real life she has come to a place in her life with her husband that she can non-anxiously reflect on the depth of intimate friendships between the sexes. At one point she writes," My brother and I would never think of reducing each other to sexual objects. . .Playfulness was encouraged, and it was never confused with flirting because we expressed our sexuality in our brotherhood and sisterhood, not in eroticism. We knew we had a responsibility toward each other--the bonus was that we enjoyed each other's presence. We still do."

I will stop here. I am pretty sure there is a part three coming.

]]>Dan BrennanTue, 26 Jun 2018 20:43:38 -0500Review: Why Can't We Be Friends? Pt 1https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/06/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-pt-1.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/06/review-why-cant-we-be-friends-pt-1.htmlI am thrilled that Aimee Byrd's new book on friendship between the sexes, Why Can't We Be Friends?: Avoidance is not Purity gets released next week. Friends, she is dropping a bombshell in the conservative evangelical community and is making...I am thrilled that Aimee Byrd's new book on friendship between the sexes, Why Can't We Be Friends?: Avoidance is not Puritygets released next week. Friends, she is dropping a bombshell in the conservative evangelical community and is making waves. While Byrd's argument for cross-sex friendship never engages reciprocal power in friendship between men and women (egalitarians), her book makes a sustained argument for an intimate, affectionate, cross-gender friendships.

If you would have told me in 2010 that conservative evangelical publisher, P & R Publishing would publish afull-length book on the subject before InterVarsity, I would have been quite skeptical. IVP has published some really cool egalitarian books. But the glaring neglect by IVP to publish on this topic reflects how egalitarian theologians and pastors themselves have brushed aside friendship as a serious theological treasure for Christians who prize egalitarian fullness.

In making her strong case, Byrd as a complementarian, ironically, helps skeptical and anxious egalitarians pay attention. For example, egalitarian Scot McKnight writes an impressive blurb about her book. Although McKnight has championed women in the church, his ecclesiology (in his blogs and books) has never joyfully claimed intimate, mutual, affectionate cross-gender friendships. He's never modeled any egalitarian vulnerability in friendship with women in his blog or his books.

And Byrd's book, reveals a woman's serious theological reflection far deeper than egalitarian Halee Gray Scott's book on women and leadership, Dare Mighty Things. Byrd's full-length book on male-female friendship is a provocative theological musing plunging into deeper waters than what many egalitarian theologians and pastors have offered in blogs and books. She fully embraces the "I" word--intimacy--in platonic relationships.

I am also thrilled that Byrd's book goes far beyond anything Christianity Today has done. Yes, including their narrow vision of women in the church and in male-female friendship. Byrd's argument challenges the male invulnerability of Ed Stetzer and the anxiousness of Anna Broadway (all close dyads were "emotional dating").

But I would also observe Byrd's argument claims an intimacy that progressive evangelicals have also pushed aside for perhaps, big picture items. I have been supremely disappointed by the lack of theological reflection among progressive egalitarians. There are a few progressives who embrace friendship as the heart and soul of egalitarian relationships between men and women. Kathy Escobar, Ellen Haroutunian, Jim Henderson and Jonalyn Fincher are among the handful who have claimed friendship as an important social relationship with interdependent power.

This overt disregard by both progressives and conservatives has been exposed by the #ChurchToo movement. We have no serious theology of a man and a woman being, together, alone. Missio Alliance has been silent on egalitarian leaders--theologians or pastors--stepping forward with stories or blogs on deep friendships between men and women in leadership. Their movement hasn't produced any serious, full-length, egalitarian reflection on spiritual friendship between men and women in leadership or within the church community. In the conservative community, Byrd's book is making waves. Six weeks prior to the publication date she had received four negative responses.

Byrd clearly has moved into uncharted territory and I am thankful a woman showed up to do some serious reflection on spiritual intimacy between men and women.

]]>Dan BrennanWed, 20 Jun 2018 19:08:31 -0500Friendship as a Foundation: Moving Beyond Bill Hybels and Anxious Egalitarianism Pt 4https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/05/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-4.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/05/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-4.htmlI have watched the chatter on social media as bloggers (men and women) have been stirred to react in this new era of anxious egalitarianism. As I anticipated , a number of bloggers have been stirred to respond to this...I have watched the chatter on social media as bloggers (men and women) have been stirred to react in this new era of anxious egalitarianism. As I anticipated , a number of bloggers have been stirred to respond to this pervasive sense of social anxiety infiltrating what was perceived to be healthy egalitarian leadership. Aren't you struck by the fact that the egalitarian bloggers with power/platform have virtually been silent on the relational power of spiritual friendship between men and women? Where are the egalitarian voices stepping forward to help us navigate spiritual intimacy between the sexes?

It should be no surprise, really. For forty years Willow Creek egalitarianism (the most popular kind) did not include cross-sex friendship when it dived into deep relational language/connection. Deep relationships in church? You betcha! Deep egalitarian marriages? No question.

But deep relational language that embraced friendships between men and women? Not hardly.

It's no coincidence that through the years--going all the way back to thirty years ago--Hybels wrote and preached on "deep" relationships within the church and marriage but with no corresponding depth in cross-gender friendship. This has been evangelical egalitarianism.

This poverty or scarceness among egalitarians may seem like a small shortcoming in light of the bigger picture of women welcomed to preach in churches. But the more I researched the history of spiritual friendship between the sexes, the more I discovered how one-sided friendship has been. It was one-dimensional. Friendship throughout Christendom was male-centered. Women were considered incapable of being true friends by the spiritual experts (men). Women were considered spiritual distractions or temptations to knowing holy friendship.

In this history men have run the show.

Inextricably bound to the invisibility of women ("weaker sex" or scarce female personal power in virtue) in the spiritual friendship tradition is the glaring absence of God’s powerful nearness in cross-sex friendship. These are tied together.

I have a few rambling (not exhaustive) thoughts on the psychodynamic theory on differentiation of self and cross-gender friendship. While I want to be careful to not exalt it as a single-bullet, the power and beauty of it in shaping a theology of cross-sex friendship has been a huge blessing to me the past ten years.

It's important to understand at the outset, that every blogger, every theologian, every pastor who has an opinion about cross-gender friendship has psychological theories as their background beliefs. Everybody has their own social psychology that shapes their commitment to the Billy Graham rule or their other "biblical" or "theological" priorities in this conversation. Scratch the surface and poke around some, and we all have some kind of social psychology we adhere to.

I have come to love the breadth and depth and beauty of differentiation of self as I have immersed myself into both theory and practice.

I think its healthy and biblical to claim the friendship of God as a foundation for egalitarian fullness.

It's no small thing that the image of God as friend goes all the way back to the Old Testament. God offers divine friendship to Moses. God had a “face-to-face” meeting with Moses “as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). Commentators have noted the immediate, direct, intense conversation between Moses and God. Moses never, ever had a face-to-face meeting with a human friend like he did with God.

Then Jesus does this AMAZING thing in the Gospel of John. He told his followers that he came in order for them to have abundant life in John 10:10, and ends up telling his disciples he was no longer going to call them servants but friends (John 15:15). A core part of differentiation is claiming and knowing the fullness of "I" as distinct from others but remaining connected to others even in the midst of their psychological pressure for you to change. It's knowing one's full "I" when significant others are demanding "we." Differentiated individuals are able to take a stand in an emotionally intense system.

Whoever is reading this right now, differentiation is not about me trying to pressure you to come over to what I believe about the friendship of God as a foundation for egalitarian fullness. I let go of any desire to change you or pressure you to join me in that belief if you are not there. I'll say a few more things about that as we go on.

Once I connected dots with differentiation of self and God's friendship, a vast, whole new world opened up to me as far as how wide and long and high and deep friendship is in the world. And history!!!! Perhaps its precisely because God is a friend we discover friendship to be this universal experience and phenomenon. It’s really not a far-fetched idea to talk about a theology of friendship or a hermeneutic of friendship given its breadth and depth and power across all cultures and times. For sure, there are varying degrees and differences throughout history, but the endless stories of personal friendship are something we see over and over again.

It also explains how in God's cosmos, friendship defies reduction. It defies downsizing. It defies so many attempts to scale it down. One author thinks of friendship through this angle. Another through this one. Still another one through this meaning. Then there is this rich reflection. And theologian Liz Carmichael surveys the richness of diverse theological meanings in her book here. It seems like there is this unending reflection of friendship because of divine energy being poured out on all flesh!

But this I do know from years of experience now of being alone, together with female friends, face-to-face. I know--in a deep sense of knowing--the biblical witness that God is a friend to both man and woman. No matter what we say about human friendships, the language of divine friendship immediately puts friendship in the deepest relational language of all relational languages and categories. It’s a relational dimension to God’s nearness that knows no frontiers. There is a mysterious fullness to divine friendship that we can taste, see, know, and feel, now. It's also abounding with life-giving energy. We are never going to be able to plumb the depths of ever-present boundless energy, vitality, vigor, and power in God’s presence as our friend to women and men.

One of the things this means is that a theology of cross-sex friendship is not about theological leftovers after all the power has been distributed for deep church life and deep married life. A theology of cross-sex friendship is not an inconsequential "add-on" after we have exhausted relational depth in the church and in marriage.It seems to me that for a man and woman to know God as a friend, Divine friendship immediately points us to a relational power and presence in God’s intimate closeness as our friend like no other friend we know on earth or will ever know. In Divine friendship, there is an unspeakable depth, fullness, and mystery.

If two people know and enjoy God's friendship--including two opposite-sex friends--they share the greatest common ground possible that could unite two people. Of all the "Aha! You enjoy that too!" scenarios that unite and bond friends--God's friendship is the greatest of all. What kind of friend could draw two cross-sex friends into intimate friendship? A friend like God. From A to Z, from beginning into eternity, God's nearness as a friend to men and women is the greatest common ground they could know in leadership, ministry, or mere friendship.

Do Christians need a vast array of studies from sociologists, therapists, theologians, and pastors to convince them that Christ's friendship--His relational nearness--is foundation for egalitarian fullness? Perhaps. But after sixteen years of investing my life into deep cross-gender friendships, I know Christ is the foundation for the fullness of friendship.

Understanding that the Bible itself claims God is a friend gives me the hermeneutical courage to see God's closeness as a friend as profoundly healing and hopeful and gloriously meaningful!! The power of divine friendship is inexhaustible. Friendship doesn't take a backseat nor assume inferiority to other hermeneutical emphases. Indeed, Roberta Gilbert believes, "friendship may be the ideal paradigm for all relationships."

"Power struggles" start here. Here that is in the significance of power in our hermeneutical emphases. No matter how deep we go in the conversation on power between men and women, does Divine friendship have a place at the hermeneutical table just as much as any claims of ecclesial power or marital power??? Knowing God as friend gives both man and woman access to unlimited reciprocal power--shared power with (not power-over) at every developmental step in their friendship.

Self-differentiation is a mature inner knowing of who you are in relation to others--including important others.

A key part of self-differentiation and healthy relationships is knowing who you are--your thoughts, feelings, desires--in connection with whom you are closest to. Jesus gives us authentic personal power-authentic personal presence to know we are as we learn to relate to other's intense feelings, ideas, anxieties. The fullness of healthy connection is knowing who you are and not being part of an emotional domino in a system. It's the ability to say "I" when others want you to say "we."

Knowing God as friend--not just an abstract knowing--but to know God as friend is to know a friend like no other. Coming to know Jesus as a friend takes us deep into what it means to be a woman, what it means to a man, what it means to be human. The biblical witness that directs us to us knowing that Jesus calls us friends is not a kind of software that gets added on after the sexual hardware was wired in our human makeup.

I anticipated there would be many men (and women) who claim the Billy Graham rule as a wise rule in this new era of anxious egalitarianism. But I was looking for any egalitarian bloggers/authors with platforms to come forth claiming friendship between men and women was possible via differentiating closeness. It was cool to see Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren step forth. And I greatly appreciated Tina Osterhouse's contribution at CBE. We are making progress!

But I was wondering if we would see any egalitarian bloggers/authors go deep into differentiating closeness. There is a spiritual awakening happening right now in the #MeToo and the #ChurchToo movement. The power of women's voices is emerging out of patriarchy. The reckoning is here. Male ego, entitlement, and power, sexualized aggression are no longer tolerable in the physical proximity of a woman.

What kind of nearness can men and women know in this new era of anxious egalitarianism? Women can stand against a sexualized work environment. They can stand against all forms of coercive pressure. There will be no more toleration for sexualized remarks. But there is something greater than that in differentiation of self. Women have the relational power to the what, when, where, why, and how in relation to men. They have the power to gladly choose egalitarian fullness.

Friendship as Egalitarian Fullness

One of the greatest blessings I have come to know as I have dived into a differentiation of self in the last ten years is coming to see how it shines the spotlight on egalitarian fullness. Christian friendship between men and women is nothing less than men and women coming to know the fullness of God's friendship, right here, right now, in this world. This is what I have been waiting to see bloggers/authors point men and women to in this new era of anxiety. Are we now awakened to know the fullness of Christ's presence between men and women?

In the history of spiritual friendship--including Willow Creek egalitarianism we've seen in evangelical seminaries and publishers like IVP--woman has never been capable of being a full adult in friendship with a man.When I saw how much power--unrestrained male power--Bill Hybels had in throwing his one time "friend" and co-leader under the bus after the Chicago Tribune article, I couldn't help but think about the glaring absence of egalitarian fullness at Willow.

Differentiation of self invites both men and women into something more profound than this anxiety of engulfment. Patriarchy has always defined the limitations of a woman's self when she's near a man. Clearly, there are evangelicals on this side of #ChurchToo in this hour of acute anxiety circling the wagons around around marriage, making it as it were, a "cult of two." The male logic of the Billy Graham does not vulnerably invite women into this decision-making process. It's only this entity--"the cult of two"--that can protect a man and a woman from the assumed inferiority of women and friendship.

But I also have seen the anxiety among egalitarians. It's like what the Willow Creek model has created is this psychological separation of separate spheres between men and women. Sure, men and women can be "friends" in this model, but friendship has never been the heart and soul of evangelical egalitarianism. Friendship is still neatly compartmentalized as something that is not about where "equality"--egalitarian fullness--can take place. It's only available in marriage and church.

So, egalitarians like Tish Harrison Warren, fear about getting too close to opposite-sex friends. Evangelicals--particularly evangelical egalitarians shaped by Willow Creek model--fear that in getting too close to the opposite-sex in friendship they will lose their self--they will fall down the slippery slope of adultery, they will become triangulated, they will not be claim self-responsibility in egalitarian fullness as simply two friends, being together, alone.

What differentiation of self has done is open my eyes to this glorious authentic freedom toward egalitarian fullness in friendship.Desire for egalitarian fullness is not satiated with "equality" in church or marriage. The hermeneutic of friendship helps us to see this fullness to God's presence as a friend to women and men. Women are no longer second-class citizens in spiritual friendship. Women are longer invisible in friendship. They get a full voice in the what,when, where, why, and how in friendship. Every moment.

Cross-sex friendship nothing less than a wide-open invitation to Christ's fullness beyond benevolent sexism. Can a man and woman, being together, alone, as two cross-sex friends taste and know and experience something of the fullness of God's friendship? The power of this hermeneutic awakens us to see that a man and woman may know the full range of Christ's fullness in their friendship. Abundance. Fullness. Generosity. Reciprocity. Shalom. The whole range of non-utilitarian relationship is freely offered to men and woman who are friends of Jesus. Right here. Right now.

At any moment a man and a woman may mutually become aware of the fullness of Christ's friendship. It's not bait-and-switch to entangled dysfunction. As our Friend, Christ has come in order that we might know the fullness of abundant life--in friendship, too. Seen through the lens as friends of God, Paul prays for us as friends to know the height, breadth, length, and inexhaustible depths of God's fullness (Ephesians 3:14-19).

It gets even better. The good news of seeing Christ's ever-present friendship through a developmental lens of differentiation of self, is Christ meets every single one of us where we are. Friendship in the words of Emerson, "demands religious treatment." We can see friendship as a school for our journey into the fullness of life, the fullness of self, the fullness of Christ's presence.

]]>Dan BrennanTue, 22 May 2018 06:42:16 -0500Friendship as a Foundation: Moving Beyond Bill Hybels and Anxious Egalitarianism Pt 3https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/05/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-3.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/05/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-3.htmlSo much has happened since the Chicago Tribune article back in March! We have some bombshells to talk about since my last blog post! It's not any exaggeration to say we are facing this unprecedented moment as the #ChurchToo movement...So much has happened since the Chicago Tribune article back in March!

We have some bombshells to talk about since my last blog post! It's not any exaggeration to say we are facing this unprecedented moment as the #ChurchToo movement clashes not just with unwanted sexual behaviors but with all the entitled male power within a kinder and gentler benevolent sexism.

I could almost turn this blog series into a sort of a running commentary as women struggle with so many unresolved issues of ecclesial/relational power and male entitlement.in this new era of anxious egalitarianism. Since I wrote my last post, evangelicals (both complementarians and egalitarians) are facing unprecedented anxiety and chaos in their cyber and face-to-face communities. In this past week, Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has faced a serious backlash after an audio recording from 2000 resurfaced in which he told abused wives they should pray and "be submissive in every way you can."

Then conservative evangelical Beth Moore came forward with powerful blog post describing years and years of her acquiescing, accommodating, and complying to the psychological power of benevolent sexism in her everyday interactions with men. For conservative evangelicals. Beth Moore stepping forward like this was for conservatives, a bombshell of a different dimension to male-female closeness. Here is a clip of what she wrote:

As a woman leader in the conservative Evangelical world, I learned early to show constant pronounced deference – not just proper respect which I was glad to show – to male leaders and, when placed in situations to serve alongside them, to do so apologetically. I issued disclaimers ad nauseam. I wore flats instead of heels when I knew I’d be serving alongside a man of shorter stature so I wouldn’t be taller than he. I’ve ridden elevators in hotels packed with fellow leaders who were serving at the same event and not been spoken to and, even more awkwardly, in the same vehicles where I was never acknowledged. I’ve been in team meetings where I was either ignored or made fun of, the latter of which I was expected to understand was all in good fun. I am a laugher. I can take jokes and make jokes. I know good fun when I’m having it and I also know when I’m being dismissed and ridiculed. I was the elephant in the room with a skirt on.

See, the men in Moore’s stories — the ones who refused to speak to her (following the Billy Graham Rule, to be sure), the ones who expected her deference (didn’t you know God created Adam first?), the ones who commented on her appearance instead of her call — they didn’t see themselves as sinning through their actions. If anything, I am certain they saw themselves as embodying Godly Manhood. . .

The tricky thing is that the overwhelming majority of men I’ve known entrenched in benevolent sexism actually are… not jerks. I enjoyed them and have been (and am) dear friends with them. They aren’t bad people. They aren’t creepy and certainly not predatory. They’re the types of men you want to be around, the types of men you trust to do what is best.

And this is precisely the problem with benevolent sexism: It masquerades as kindness, it masquerades as love — in my experience, it is often done from a place of good intentions… but it is no less harmful to women than overt sexism.

Now, even though Paige Patterson and Beth Moore are conservative evangelicals, there were still a number of "ex" evangelical or post-evangelical women and men tweeting and commenting. They were cheering Moore on from the social media sidelines.

But also, since I wrote my last blog post, several men and women expressed opinions about friendship between the sexes intersecting with the Billy Graham rule in light the this new anxious era. Imagine that! First of all, a big round of applause goes to complementarian Aimee Byrd! She took a provocative--provocative for complementarians and anxious egalitarians--position on cross-sex friendship!. No kidding. She dropped a bombshell in the complementarian world and the world of anxious egalitarians. Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer, Tim Keller, or Scot McKnight, David Fitch, BillHybels. You name powerful evangelicals with powerful platforms. No blogs, articles, or books have taken the cross-sex friendship dyad as deep as Byrd did (I'm not counting my book or blog).

Conservative evangelical males quickly took issue with Byrd's post. If you take a peek at some of the comments from men or go to this blog.

We also saw Anglican Priest and author Tish Harrison Warren tweet out a number of bullet list points asserting that evangelicals don't have to accept a simplistic either-or, between the Billy Graham rule or bust. She then turned it into an article for Christianity Today. That magazine has never published a blog post or an in-depth article that was positive toward deep male-female friendships, though. Never. So this article for many readers of the magazine must feel like cutting edge in light of anxious egalitarianism on this side of Hybels.

In this season of reckoning, both egalitarians and complementarians are talking about something they have anxiously avoided in the forty year complementarian-egalitarian split: integrating power and dyadic friendship between men and women. But wait. The forty year avoidance is a mere tiny dot in the big historical picture where male-centered Christian tradition has always viewed women as inferior/invisible in spiritual friendship.

I have a couple of comments I want to make in light of these recent developments.

In claiming friendship as a foundation for egalitarianism, I am claiming as both men and women are friends of God, they can claim the shared power of God's friendship/nearness as friends.

I am not arguing for egalitarian abstract ideas, or concepts, or theory. Instead I am proposing a hermeneutic of friendship through the ancient practice of the presence of God. As a man and woman are friends of God, they can claim God's friendship--God's nearness, God's closeness--as good news for them, good news for their friendship! Good news for the world! It was Leanne Payne who introduced me to the ancient practice many years ago. She asserted, "We come to know ultimate Reality, not by theological ideas about it, even though these are valid and necessary, but by union."

For those of you who don't know me, I started to nurture close friendships with women as a complementarian with an intentional mindset toward practicing the presence of God. I can't credit Payne for applying the practice to cross-sex friendship dyads. She didn't go there. But sixteen years ago, I did. I could have never dreamed that claiming God's nearness in friendship with my female friends would turn me into an egalitarian! I came into this moment-by-moment awareness that claiming God's nearness in cross-sex friendship was practicing a moment-by-moment resistance to the deepest roots of hostile and benevolent sexism.

God's nearness/friendship does not play a numbers game.

One of the biggest myths among evangelicals is that God's heart, God's nearness plays favorites when it comes to numbers. This is a deep-seated, widespread patriarchal notion that many complementarians and egalitarians simply assume as true because of their anxieties and extremely limited experience. In the 21st century, this is tantamount to still holding on to the flat-earth theory.

This myth is so powerful, highly respected egalitarians--bloggers, theologians, authors--you know, those with the platforms and publishing contracts, have stayed clear claiming God's presence and power, right here, right now, in cross-sex friendship. Instead, what they have done is boxed in God to a numbers game. We are to assume a practical and functional atheism or agnosticism---a full-blown secular mindset with no intentional orientation to the fullness of God's presence in the moment whenever two cross-gender friends text, call, or see other other face-to-face when no one else is around.

We have so been brainwashed to accept this myth that even egalitarians consider a man and woman who choose to know bodily (not sex!) closeness, emotional closeness, intellectual closeness, spiritual closeness with no else around are--get this--spiritually naive or uncritical, or throwing caution to the wind. Or we compartmentalize and assert well, it's okay to assume God's presence may be near us in the front of the restaurant but not in the rear (Andy Crouch's boundary). So, you know, if there were four of us we could eat in the back of the restaurant. but God definitely could not be near two opposite-sex friends back there.

No, a thousand times no. Intentional practicing God's presence claims the fullness of biblical promises for two cross-gender friends together, alone no matter where they are. The future egalitarian ethic after #MeToo and #ChurchToo is not a retreat into functional atheism in everyday life whenever a man or woman are near each other.

Sixteen years ago, I began to repent of functional, everyday atheism when it came to the practice of knowing God's presence in cross-sex friendship. There is almost an embarrassment of riches for us to claim in this new era of anxious egalitarianism. Make no mistake about it: this is a power issue for men and women who know God. In God's overarching Story for men and women, can we claim God's nearness/friendship when we come together as two friends who love Jesus and desire to know Jesus?

Popular author John Ortberg writes,The central promise in the Bible is not “I will forgive you.” The most frequent promise is “I will be with you.” This is for cross-sex friends, too.

When we approach God's nearness through the friendship lens--both a man and woman can know God's friendship and therefore be friends with another--then friendship/nearness can also be seen as foundational to human nature. I gladly welcome Tish Harrison Warren's boundaries but they look at friendship through a marriage and sexuality lens. Opposite-sex friends are an "add-on" hence, she always (she assertively repeats, always) invites her husband to come along. I bet she doesn't do that with her female friends.

Can you imagine how many female friendships would be thwarted (and male friendships, too) if we always had to invite our spouse as absolute norm for getting together? Don't get me wrong. I totally respect her boundaries. But it surely doesn't seriously consider the power of God's nearness through a friendship lens.

I have several other points I want to make, about what it means for cross-sex friends to claim God's power in nearness as a Friend like no other friend they know and love. Imagine this good news applied for cross-sex friends: "The good news Jesus announced was simply this: God has invaded our backyard and is making his presence and power available to anybody who wants him. Right here. Right now. “The time has come,” Jesus says. Now God is closer than you think" (John Ortberg, God is Closer Than You Think).

]]>Dan BrennanSat, 05 May 2018 15:22:07 -0500Friendship as a Foundation: Moving Beyond Bill Hybels and Anxious Egalitarianism Pt 2https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/04/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-2.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/04/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-pt-2.htmlWell, a lot has happened since I wrote my first post. Nancy Ortberg, wife of John Ortberg has stepped forward with her own story. Vonda Dyer also came forth with vivid details about her story. And so did Nancy Beach....Well, a lot has happened since I wrote my first post. Nancy Ortberg, wife of John Ortberg has stepped forward with her own story. Vonda Dyer also came forth with vivid details about her story. And so did Nancy Beach.

Shortly thereafter, Bill Hybels opted out for early retirement. He did not resign. Both he and others at the helm of Willow Creek leadership stayed away from the language of resigning. They even had a prayer gathering on stage after his announcement. They did not pray for Beach, Dyer, or Ortberg. Or other women. There was no affection expressed toward these women. It was pretty much all about Bill Hybels.

Neither his words nor the staff/elders that spoke after him, conveyed any sense of mature attunement or social awareness of the hour. It’s become painfully evident Willow Creek ran an “egalitarian” system where the dominant male was in charge over women who greatly admired him. They never had fully functional, attuned, transparent, interdependent egalitarian relationships at the top.

This is the deeper conversation we need to have about a deeper egalitarianism, unlike anything before.

Three weeks ago, virtually any red-blooded American egalitarian would have ascribed so much "power" to what they thought was a "healthy" egalitarian model led by Hybels. Now we know, with all this stuff coming out---there was a lot of psychological social sexist ministry happening under his leadership that was happening underneath the surface egalitarianism.

There was this enormous male empire happening with a number of highly respected women who deeply respected Hybels and they longed for Willow to flourish. It's been shocking to discover one of the most revered egalitarian men in all the world who wrote books referencing healthy relationships again and again, was out of touch--he lacked profound interdependent attunement with women on his staff or Willow Creek Association.

We have this enormous vacuum in egalitarianism at this critical moment as #MeToo has reached arguably the most influential egalitarian leader in American evangelicalism. As I mentioned in the first post, this Willow Creek model that has been revered by InterVarsity Press, Tyndale, and other publishers as "healthy" has never produced one full length book in forty years on spiritual friendship between men and women.

Google "spiritual intimacy between a man and a woman" and your search is not going to take you to Missio Alliance, The Junia Project, David Fitch, Scot McKnight, or the CBE. There is a void in egalitarian leadership in this cultural moment with an acute sense of anxious egalitarianism. One of the biggest reasons we are here is that Willow Creek egalitarianism never took a woman's intimate personal power in friendship, seriously. Both men and women have a heightened sense of anxiety right now but for different reasons.

They never moved past a deeply embedded patriarchal tradition that told women the who, what, where, when, and why in intimate relationships. We can call it a superficial egalitarianism, anxious egalitarianism, or we can call it, complementarian lite. Neither complementarians nor egalitarians have addressed the deepest roots of benevolent sexism in their church life or leadership.

The notion of any male leader with privilege, power, or platform (significant blog audience and the ability to reap a profit for book publishers) intentionally sharing power and risk with a woman (as co-leaders or spiritual friends) over a sustained season of leadership with no one else present is utterly absent in egalitarian books and blogs. And, progressive evangelicals haven't fared any better, by the way.

Before #MeToo, both complementarians and egalitarians paid lip service to women's intimate personal power in non-romantic relationships.

Both movements ignored the fullness of a woman's intimate self in the presence of a man she's not married to when no one else was around. Both movements could anxiously maintain outmoded psychology for their claims for "healthy" relationships between men and women. Both anxiously veered away for diving deep into the heart of sexism: what does spiritual intimacy look like, feel like, taste like between a man and a woman when no one is around?

Both have profoundly emphasized male detachment, male separation, male dominance as healthy (when men don't give women a full yes or a full no in considering the Billy Graham rule, men are still in control). Said in another way, neither movement has paid serious attention to healthy intimate interdependent relationships with no one else around. The focus and stress on the communal nature of gifts--a gift based egalitarianism--was sufficient.

A Deep Rethinking About Friendship

The Christian tradition has never taken seriously a woman’s personal intimate power in friendship. Never. That is pervasive sexism in our contemporary egalitarian world. Embracing friendship as a foundation for egalitarianism is not throwing a few attributes of friendship like support, vulnerability, loyalty, and availability into a Vitamix, and, presto! No more benevolent sexism! This has been the major flaw in anxious egalitarianism for the past forty years.

The Willow Creek model has always produced opposite-sex friends. Don't misunderstand me. For many years, Nancy Beach and Bill Hybels were "friends." But, it is clear now, that she was also "under" him. Under his leadership. Under his charisma. Under his Willow Creek empire. And there were no egalitarian bloggers with platform or books ever challenging that male privilege.

Sure they were meaningful "friends" at the time. But following centuries of patriarchy in Christian tradition, this anxious egalitarianism never took a woman's intimate personal power seriously. So what happened at Willow--without this full expression of attuned, interdependent, egalitarian relationship at the top--something I would call "friendship"--you have something akin to a deeply embedded psychological doctrine of separate spheres still operating where women are viewed as "friends."

This is assumed in so many egalitarian blogs, books etc. This perpetuates so many dominant male-submissive females in surface egalitarianism. It gives only the appearance of equality. Its the Willow Creek model. And that was the evangelical standard to judge all "healthy" egalitarian relationships from what, 1990s to 3 weeks ago? There is no egalitarian theology of spiritual friendship between the sexes offered by progressive evangelicals or conservative evangelicals. There is no egalitarian theology of spiritual intimacy between a man and a woman who are co-pastors when no one else is around.

Women do not share a fully attuned, social, public, healthy interdependent personal power in this culture. Women have never been given a fullness of intimate personal power, a fullness of voice in this version of complementarian lite. An unrestricted, unhindered, unguarded, full social attunement between men and women has never been prized, valued, treasured, or sought after in this culture. And, again, we haven't seen this among progressive evangelicals, either.

One only has to look at the therapeutic culture to see this profound contrast. In this culture, at this moment, women have been given the fullness of choice--the full range of options--to engage in one-on-one relationships with their male clients with no one else is around.

Although the therapeutic dyad is not an egalitarian intimate friendship, it has many striking parallels. A number of female psychotherapists identify the overlaps in this book. A veteran psychologist has also examined the parallels, here. It is a common, everyday experience in major American cities: a woman’s personal presence modeling intimate power with a male client. Whatever one thinks about the therapeutic culture, it cannot be denied it has opened the door wide open to the what, when, why, where, and how for women’s intimate power when no one else is looking.

Many female therapists meet alone with their male clients, weekly. Often, they have the power to choose which male clients is their "best fit" for their own practice. In many scenarios, they have the full freedom to choose if they will have a therapeutic relationship with this male client and not that one. That's called discerning openness. Female therapists have the power to end appointments with male clients. They have the intimate power to choose which theories to implement and practice. Thousands of women every day choose to be something different than shoehorned into an anxious Billy Graham rule as a social norm that had its place in the twentieth century.

They have the power to bring their fullest self to be present with their male clients. To care for their male clients. To pledge confidentiality. To keep secrets. They have power to act in their client’s best interests. They have intimate power to collaborate with their client. They have the power to tell their client what the client should hear with no one else around.

Many of these attributes of intimate power are necessary for cross-gender friendship!

How many women have been held back, impeded, or smothered by churches clinging to anxious egalitarianism the past forty years? By theologians? By men with huge platforms and blogs? How many women have not been empowered to their fullest and best selves in intimate friendships with men? How many anxious egalitarian male leaders have not welcomed women to the fullness of life? The fullness of love?

Why, yes of course, there are thousands of female therapists who choose to not meet with male clients. For many reasons, they choose to meet with female clients, only. That's the fullness of their attuned choice and where they are. But for thousands of others, there are female therapists who choose to meet with male clients in common, ordinary occurrences across America. And, to flip it around, there are many female clients who choose to meet alone with male therapists. Sure, there are those who don't. But the issue is they have this fullness of egalitarian choice to do that.

A deep rethinking of friendship means inviting women's intimate personal power into the fullness of interdependent relationship. It is nothing less than a social movement toward moving past a psychological doctrine of separate spheres and viewing shared power, shared attunement as the heart and soul of egalitarianism.

A deep rethinking of friendship has to be more than casually tossing attributes of friendship in the Vitamix. There has to be full attunement to a woman's fullness of self. The fullness of love. The fullness of her giftedness.

The opposite of a woman’s powerlessness is not ecclesial power. It includes that. But a woman—baptized and indwelt by the Holy Spirit—her personal power to love othersdeeply cannot be solely confined to either ecclesial or marital power. Christian tradition (including skeptical egalitarian male theologians) has never celebrated, affirmed, validated, and feasted a woman’s authentic intimate power in cross-gender friendships.

Friendship as the foundation is shared vulnerability unlike anything evangelical egalitarianism has offered.So many questions if we see friendship as a foundation. Next post.

]]>Dan BrennanSun, 15 Apr 2018 13:25:29 -0500Friendship as a Foundation: Moving Beyond Bill Hybels and Anxious Egalitarianism Pt 1https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/friendship-as-a-foundation-moving-beyond-bill-hybels-and-anxious-egalitarianism-.htmlI don’t believe it is an understatement to observe that the revelation of sexual misconduct against evangelical megachurch pastor Bill Hybels has rocked the evangelical egalitarian community. It was a substantial article in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune that broke the...I don’t believe it is an understatement to observe that the revelation of sexual misconduct against evangelical megachurch pastor Bill Hybels has rocked the evangelical egalitarian community. It was a substantial article in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune that broke the news to the world and to many unsuspecting egalitarians.

Women—including longtime female friends of Hybels—were doubling down on their desire for accountability and deeper communal discernment as the Tribune article detailed their stories. For me, perhaps the most shocking news was that one of those women happened to be Nancy Beach. She was passionately involved in Willow Creek in the early years serving not only as a teaching pastor but as a programming director for the church for over twenty years. She was one of the founding leaders.

Egalitarian evangelicals are suddenly reeling over credible accusations against one of the most respected megachurch leaders in the egalitarian community. In the article, Hybels flatly denies all accusations; he calls them all “lies.” To say that the Willow Creek egalitarian model has been foundational for so many evangelicals would be putting it mildly. More on that in a moment.

In the subsequent days after the article, Hybels and Willow Creek have taken a ferocious stand against #MeToo, #ChurchToo, and these accusers. He has also resisted requests from respected evangelical pastor John Ortberg and his wife Nancy Ortberg for a deeper independent investigation. In a follow-up article, the Tribune reports that Hybels received a standing ovation. The news of that hit me hard. This is not the time or place to give a standing ovation at this hour. Remember the ovation for Andy Savage?

But I also couldn’t help connecting Hybels’ defiant stance with Trump’s declarations that all his female accusers are liars. As an outsider, I am deeply grieving that Hybels is asserting that highly respected John and Nancy Ortberg, and pastor Nancy Beach are liars and colluding against him.

If you would have told me a year ago that both Bill Hybels with Donald Trump would similarly both call their female accusers liars, I would have never believed you. It was after all, Lynne Hybels and Willow Creek to come out and support the “silence is not spiritual,” and the #MeToo.

Where is a profound sense of humility?

I am deeply grieving because I consider Bill Hybels, Nancy Beach, John Ortberg, and Nancy Ortberg friends of Christ. I “know” them by reading books by Hybels and Ortberg. The other parties involved, I don’t know, but let’s focus on the four I do “know.” These are all friends of God.

At least in my understanding as an outsider, they all had high credibility statuses in the evangelical egalitarian community prior to this revelation. They are so high up the chain of credibility and respect in this community. In my albeit, limited survey of friends reacting to this in social media, there is this sudden emerging polarization happening within this community.

One of the fallouts of the Willow Creek smackdown between Hybels vs Beach/Ortbergs is that a gift-based egalitarian model has not adequately challenged the high anxiety for male leaders to surrender power in one-on-one relationships between men and women. In the egalitarian conversation, there is this huge blindspot or weakness when you have so many egalitarian male leaders who can only speak about this in theory or about a few occasions.

My intention in this post is not to hash out the issues between Hybels and his accusers but to reflect on egalitarianism when friendship is not its foundation. Before we look into that, it's important to recognize some of the important contributions to emerge out of this movement.

Willow Creek Egalitarianism

Willow Creek was, arguably, one of the most influential megachurches in America for evangelical women who aspired to leadership. Thousands of women (and men) trekked each year to attend Bill Hybels’ annual Leadership Summit. The Willow Creek model of egalitarianism was a beacon of light and hope for many women desiring to break the glass ceiling. For scores and scores of evangelical women, the Willow model was a healthy turn away from evangelical benevolent sexism.

Scot McKnight, one of the biggest evangelical voices supporting the “gift-based” egalitarian model, attended Willow for years before he became an Anglican. He has emphasized giftedness as a way to advance women's leadership in the church. His foreword to Tara Beth Leach’s recent book, Emboldened clearly reveals inside seminary conversations about what is the best way to promote women in ministry. For him the gift-based model is at the heart and soul of evangelical egalitarianism.

When Scot wrote the foreword to Tara Beth Leach’s recent book, Emboldened, he wrote, “Over four years at Northern Seminary we had many conversations about women in ministry and how best to embolden gifted women in their ministries, and one of our discussions led to this: avoid justice, emphasize giftedness.” This comports with the Willow Creek model.

No matter where one turns in the evangelical egalitarian community, one can see authors/pastors influences or shaped by gift-based egalitarianism. Numerous books written by men and women have referenced either Hybels or others who are associated with Willow.

Without a doubt, I have been positively shaped by this model. I discovered Ruth Haley Barton's book, Equal to the Task: Men and Women in Partnership several years into my ongoing practice of cross-gender friendships. Barton was attending Willow at the time and her book was a big blessing and encouragement to me. Plus McKnight's own contributions to his understanding of mutuality helped me early on in my journey toward an egalitarian paradigm.

Friendship as the Foundation

“You did not befriend women because you were an egalitarian,” said one of my closest female friends over breakfast a couple of days after the news broke about Hybels. “Your friendship with women turned you into an egalitarian.”

I was in for a big surprise when I started to go public about my friendships with women a little over ten years ago. I thought evangelical egalitarians would enthusiastically see all the benefits of intentional spiritual friendships out in the open. It was quite a jolt to me when I began to run into skeptical egalitarians.

To say I encountered spiritual anxiety among these unconvinced Christians would be an understatement. It was not that they were opposed to cross-sex friendships. They had plenty of opposite-sex friends.

What, then, were they anxious about? It soon became clear to me: my intention to practice dyadic opposite-sex friendships before a watching world. They were highly anxious in men and women sharing authentic power and risk in one-on-one relationships with no one else around. Friendship was not foundational to any Willow Creek model. It was not even up there on the high priority list.

There is no shortage of blogs and articles by Missio Alliance, CBE International, and The Junia Project that have promoted a Willow Creek model with no practical or concrete encouragement of shared power, risk, and vulnerability in one-on-one relationships. They either lightly touch on the subject or completely ignore the full range of Spirit-empowered dyadic friendships between a man and a woman alone with no one else around.

There is a lot of great stuff, a lot of great stuff—don’t misunderstand my point—but the overall thrust of so many directives put out by these well-intentioned egalitarians follow a Willow Creek model. Glaringly absent from their wise counsel or encouragement is a conscious, intentional spiritual friendship between men and women sharing power, risk, and spiritual intimacy.

I could go on and on. It’s all great stuff. But. Let’s put it this way. Google, “spiritual intimacy between a man and woman” or something similar and Google will not lead you to any articles/books by CBE, The Junia Project, or Missio Alliance. The glaring absence comports with the deep underlying anxiety embedded within the Willow Creek model.

If you do any kind of Google search it will also not lead you to David Fitch or Scot McKnight. Any cursory glance of recent books/blogs written by men and women coming out of the Northern Seminary community share this uneasiness or incredibly cautious approach to a man and woman learning to share intimate power in one-on-one spiritual friendships. The Willow Creek model has this supreme anxiousness about spiritual intimacy between a man and woman who choose intentional spiritual practices as a dyad.

David Fitch’s recent book, Faithful Presence lists seven disciplines for the church. Not one chapter is a discipline on friendship. There is no unique wisdom for a man and woman sharing power together alone as leaders or friends.

Spiritual intimacy within opposite-sex paired friendship is not on his radar screen. His blogs over the years have never deeply dived into this powerful narrative in post-Christendom. He was one of the first skeptical egalitarians shaped by Willow Creek I encountered.

Friendship (including the full range of shared power between a man and woman with no one else around) is not the heart and soul of egalitarianism for some of the most recognized names in Northern Seminary and at Missio Alliance.

The one glaring thing all these books, blogs, and articles have in common: this deep anxiety to delve into the depths of shared power in one-on-one relationship between a man and a woman. They have no deep encouragement or wisdom for a male leader to confront kinder and gentler sexism within him in one-on-one relationship with a woman—when no else is around or looking.

For example, in Scot McKnight’s foreword, he is very clear to include that spiritual intimacy with Tara Beth Leach includes his wife: “Kris (my wife) and I have walked with and prayed for Tara Beth over every one of her moves in the last five years.” Now, its great that Kris is on board, but where is the spiritual intimacy between Scot and Tara Beth? It would be utterly alien and out of character for the Willow Creek model, for Scot to have written, “I have walked with and prayed for Tara Beth in many intimate times together in my office with the door closed the last five years.”

There is no anxiety in the Willow Creek model regarding friendships between men and women if there are always more than two people involved to parse out power issues. Numbers—more than two—are an enormous soothing mechanism for safety and shalom in men and women sharing power in leadership.

Spiritual intimacy (shared power and vulnerability) between a male leader and a female leader alone is unheard of in the Willow Creek model. It’s not addressed or encouraged in any of these blogs, articles, and books by people shaped by this egalitarianism. In this model, it is giftedness that is at the heart of egalitarianism, not friendship.

In the gifted model a man is never confronted to be attentive to shared power in one-on-one relationships when one else is around.

More to come.

]]>Dan BrennanThu, 29 Mar 2018 20:00:06 -0500Powerful Cherishing: "Would You Pray for Me?" https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/powerful-cherishing-would-you-pray-for-me-.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/powerful-cherishing-would-you-pray-for-me-.html“Would you pray for me?” she asked with a glowing smile. "I have a date today." It’s always a great joy, delight, and honor to pray with and for a single female friend who is going out on a date...“Would you pray for me?” she asked with a glowing smile. "I have a date today."

It’s always a great joy, delight, and honor to pray with and for a single female friend who is going out on a date or who is dating. If someone would have told me back in 2001 I would be diving into the deep end of the intimate pool, praying for single female friends who specifically asked me to pray for their dating adventures, I’m sure I would have reacted with the strangest look of bewilderment! Huh? Say What? How would that even be possible?

This is unthinkable both in the evangelical purity culture or in the secular version of romantic purity for overlapping and distinct reasons--for a married opposite sex friend praying tenderly and intimately for a single friend who is dating. Opposite sex friends opening themselves up to God’s heart, to God’s friendship, to God’s tenderness, to God’s enjoyment, to God’s wisdom between them about one of them dating—both the world and the church claim either scarcity or practical atheism in both cultures!

I shared the same belief for the first 25 years of my evangelical journey.

But what if the opposite sex friends are friends with God?

One of the biggest surprises and delights for me in the last ten years are single female friends who have asked me to pray tenderly and delightfully for them for intimate dating wisdom, intimate blessing, and a vivid sense God's intimate nearness. Like sex, prayer, as Simone Weil and others like Norman Wirzba have noted, requires attentiveness. Prayerful attentiveness to God's heart and to the individual we are praying for and with.

Wirzba comments that the connection between prayer and attentiveness is crucial because "as a discipline attention clears my vision of vestiges of the ego so that a humble, compassionate, and just regard for the others can occur."

You won’t find this in any of Ed Stetzer’s articles in Christianity Today. In evangelical spirituality, prayer has no authentic intimate power to transform stereotypical and outdated forms of closeness between men and women.

Opposite sex friends who are friends with God believe God desires friendship with all men and women. God is love. As author Wayne Teasdale put it, “The Gospel proclaims, “God is love.” We might just as easily say, “God is friendship.” For men and women who see God as the ultimate Friend, prayer is the ultimate love language whether one is married, single, divorced or widowed.

Prayer points us to a union with God as friend for opposite sex friends. Prayer points us to God’s astonishing and deep tenderness for men and women. God does not hoard up abounding tenderness to potential or committed romantic couples only. Men and women (married, divorced, single, or dating) who are friends with God have come to see prayer is not dropping quarters in a Divine Vending Machine. Prayer is the language they know and share as Divine tenderness--God's heart.

For female friends who express this bold tenderness to request prayer from me for their dating life, I have witnessed their hunger for this deep knowing of God’s tender nearness in their dating. In other words, knowing God’s heart, knowing God’s nearness means more to them than seeing prayer as some kind of utilitarian exchange between them and God.

They eschew a utilitarian view of prayer that only sees it as asking to get something from God, like sex or romantic merger. They hunger for God’s tender nearness as a friend. For opposite sex friends who hunger to know God as the ultimate Friend in the universe, praying with and for one another becomes the ultimate love language between them, shared by them, known by them.

No matter where one turns in Scripture, one can see God’s full and deep non-controlling tenderness as one of the greatest incentives for opposite sex friends to pray together when one of them is dating. Questions? Unanswered questions? Doubts? Hopes? Dreams? Joys? Burdens? Concerns? Laments? Prayer with and for a cross-gender friend is never an abstract, indifferent exercise when there is a conscious attentiveness to God and to a friend.

God’s heart offers to men and women this never-ending free gift to know and to share God’s non-controlling, non-possessive tenderness in friendship. Opposite sex friends may or may not choose to participate in this gift of knowing. One friend may not feel comfortable in entering in verbally for their friend’s dating life. God as the ultimate Friend for both opposite sex friends, has no interest in tricking either friend to pray for the other’s dating life or coercing one friends to enter into praying for one’s dating experience.

Or one friend may opt out of praying with and for another friend because of a myriad of reasons. God’s tender offer of friendship has no fine print that coerces men and women into prayer for one another in the dating process.

But God’s friendship is ever-present, ever ready to offer male and female friends to know God’s heart together when one of them begins to date or is in a committed dating relationship. God’s tenderness offers men and women to freely become partners with God. To freely dive into the unplumbed depths of non-romantic intimate tenderness when one of them is dating.

Amazing tenderness, deep non-romantic tenderness can be known by cross-gender friends who take up God’s free offer to participate not in some kind of transactional friendship that treats opposite friends as a stepping stone to romantic tenderness.

When both friends assume that their friend has the other's best interests at heart, both friends are free to learn and enjoy mutual powerful cherishing in joining together in prayer for a friend’s dating experiences. They learn to enjoy and know God’s heart in their friendship: mutual powerful cherishing in non-romantic tenderness.

They are free to partner with God’s abiding, ever-present tenderness. They nurture a mutual cherishing that would dread taking advantage of the other’s vulnerability. They share a common conviction to know God’s noncontrolling tenderness is the deepest attraction to come out of romantic consumerism.

They also discover the liberating tenderness of God's heart. God is not offering them consumerist friendships, either. God welcomes them to share a vulnerability of the deepest trust in which one friend will not take advantage of the other's vulnerability or tenderness.

Men and women who are friends of God believe God doesn't just want to be intimate with romantic couples whether they are dating or married. Knowing God’s heart in intimate friendship, friends of God believe God wonderfully desires a far broader and deeper union between men and women than romantic unions. When a friend who is single desires prayer from his/her opposite sex friend, they are longing for not just sexual union or romantic union, but for all men and women to know God’s intimate tender heart.

In the words of Henri Nouwen, "The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?"

]]>Dan BrennanWed, 14 Mar 2018 19:36:33 -0500Intimacy With God: Why Would Two Opposite Sex Friends Want to Pray With and For Each Other?https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/intimacy-with-god-why-would-two-opposite-sex-friends-want-to-pray-with-and-for-each-other.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/03/intimacy-with-god-why-would-two-opposite-sex-friends-want-to-pray-with-and-for-each-other.htmlWhy would two opposite sex friends want to pray with and for each other? Intimacy with God. Deep friendship with God. To taste and see God’s everlasting tenderness in spiritual friendship. For two opposite sex friends to know there is...Why would two opposite sex friends want to pray with and for each other?

Intimacy with God. Deep friendship with God. To taste and see God’s everlasting tenderness in spiritual friendship. For two opposite sex friends to know there is a Friend like no other. To know God as the greatest and tenderest intimate companion.

Friends, we are just beginning in the twenty-first century to taste and see what spiritual intimacy is like between two opposite-sex friends. In a post-Freudian world, spiritual intimacy is no longer conflated with sexual intimacy. Two opposite sex friends may know God as a Friend who is like no other.

This is or was not possible for many years in the evangelical purity culture. I’ve been following Christ for 37 of my 59 years of living. There is stark contrast between the first 23 years of my adult Christian faith and where I am now; I never knew what it was like to know prayer as the ultimate love language between opposite sex friends.

Why would a man and woman want to pray together? To know God’s steadfast, ever-present, unrivaled tenderness in their friendship connection. What we are beginning to discover after hundreds and hundreds of years of patriarchy, is that a man and woman who are friends with God, can mutually join together in friendship with God who is a friend like no other.

Just like the friendship of Madeleine L'Engle and Luci Shaw, two opposite sex friends, are now able to pray their way into friendship. I know this sounds so weird or unrealistic given Freud and the purity culture, but prayer does open us up to God’s ever-present tenderness. An ever-present Relational Love like no other.

Yes, its still relatively hard to grasp. Goggle spiritual intimacy between a man and a woman and you will come across dozens of books about marriage where evangelicals conflate spiritual intimacy with sex.

But why would two opposite sex friends want to pray with and for one another? Intimacy with God. Prayer is indeed the ultimate love language of God for cross-gender friends.

The Bible is filled with stories about prayer. They point us toward the ultimate Friend. They point us to the heart of God. God’s immediate presence in the here and now.

Why should we partner together with God and our opposite sex friend?

Last week, I celebrated one of my closest female friend’s birthday over dinner. And listen, there is all this debate right now about whether or not cross-gender friends should spend time alone together going out for a drink or to have dinner as two-paired friends. Let me tell you, once two cross-gender friends open themselves up to intimacy with God in prayer, enjoying dinner together is simply a part of feasting in spiritual friendship.

Anyway, both my friend and I as close prayer partners for years were both talking about this sense of both of us feeling at home with ‘powerful cherishing” a phrase I saw Gillian Ahlgren use in a non-romantic context. Prayer for and with an opposite sex friend invites us to ponder, process, and participate in deep non-romantic tenderness. It’s this special reverencing toward our cross-gender friend that honors our friend as the apple of God’s eye.

Let me give you 3 quick reasons:

Two friends can know sudden moments of deep spiritual intimacy.

Just think about the surprising story we have of Jesus and his disciples in the transfiguration. Remember the surprising closeness of God Peter, James, and John felt in that moment? Popular writer Joyce Rupp comments, “The disciples who witnessed Jesus in his glory could never be the same after that moment.”

We can know moments like that when we join together with our opposite sex friend in prayer.

It’s not too often I come across a writer or pastor who beautifully explores Divine tenderness when praying for another. William Flewelling in his book, Directions of a Pastoral Lifetime devotes a whole chapter to praying for another.

Why should we partner together with God and our opposite sex friend?

“Prayer, in the way we find it opening to us here, is really a profound openness of heart and life to God, and therefore to one another. There is a reason why Jesus put the two great commandments together: they flow together.”

Boy oh boy, that sounds so foreign if we have been immersed in either Freudian tenderness or the purity culture. But here is another quote from Flewelling:

The one who prays also develops a warm tenderness, compassion. He writes that the compassion born of prayer “reveals a heart that is tender, extremely sensitive, and a stranger to all hardness, indifference and brutality.”

Ponder that. Prayer becomes the deepest resistance to violence, aggression, and abuse in the light of Divine Tenderness.

Take my word. When men and women come to taste and see God’s intimate tenderness in spiritual friendship, participating as partners with God in sharing life together day after day, we are going to see more spiritual friendships between men and women.

Samuel Wells, Abigal Kocher comment in their book, Shaping the Prayers of the People: The Art of Intercession: “Intercessory prayer is the practice of coming before God in openness and honesty, during which the tenderest human need and our deepest hope for change and transformation, in the expectation that will confer a blessing.”

“It is a joy when it is an opportunity to engage in passionate and wholehearted dialogue with the maker, redeemer, and sustainer of all things: when one is invited to commune in the heart of God and share one’s deepest hopes, fears, and realities.”

When two opposite sex friends begin to taste this and open their hearts to God’s immediate presence, there is this richness of profound mutual sharing in communion with God in friendship.

]]>Dan BrennanFri, 09 Mar 2018 06:26:20 -0600Powerful Cherishing: Knowing God's Heart in Cross-Gender Friendshiphttps://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/02/powerful-cherishing-knowing-gods-heart-in-cross-gender-friendship.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/02/powerful-cherishing-knowing-gods-heart-in-cross-gender-friendship.htmlWhat a deep, healthy marker for all cross-gender friendships in the 21st century: powerful cherishing. Ramblings this morning about cherishing and cross-gender friends on Valentine's Day! You guys, last night with "Jane"--my Catholic therapist. I went deep into the whole...

What a deep, healthy marker for all cross-gender friendships in the 21st century: powerful cherishing. Ramblings this morning about cherishing and cross-gender friends on Valentine's Day!

You guys, last night with "Jane"--my Catholic therapist. I went deep into the whole thing about "mutual respect and powerful cherishing" within cross-gender friends. Or perhaps we went up the elevator into the heights of a tall skyscraper! Whichever metaphor, you want, we went there!

I've been pumped ever since I came across the phrase "mutual respect and powerful cherishing" by theologian Gillian Ahlgren in a context of non-romantic tenderness.

What a deep and healthy sign or indication of God' heart between cross-gender friends: mutual respect and this sense of powerful cherishing. It was like another "pinch me, is this real in 2018" with Jane. She was enthusiastically tracking with me all the way up the elevator: "It's clearly one of the greatest blessings in cross-gender friendship" she said.

Mutual cherishing is clearly one of the deepest values, deepest blessings, deepest sense of nearness in a ethic of tenderness--which would include shared non-romantic tenderness between cross-gender friends.

In one sense, cherishing in cross-gender friendship is one of the clearest *felt* indications friends are oriented to an ethic of tenderness and all other ethics.

I prayed with a single female friend over the phone on Monday. It was the first time we had ever prayed together. She had been hurting because of a romantic breakup in the past week. A lot of tender romantic pain because for a while there, it seemed like the romantic relationship had so much potential.

We dived deep into prayer. In an ethic of tenderness, of course, prayer is all about falling into the tenderness of God, resting in the sweet and precious tenderness of Christ, becoming aware of, and attentive to the tenderness of God's heart.

After the prayer she commented, "Thank you, for taking the risk to pray and pour into me. My heart feels so cherished and respected and cared for. A gift that gives me hope for the future." When she said that, I definitely knew the heart of God was present in our prayer time.

Friends, in my history of cross-gender friendship, I have been deeply blessed to know what "powerful cherishing" feels like, looks like, smells like between cross-gender friends. It's such a profound relational identity marker in God's tender-filled world.

There is nothing abstract about cherishing. It is precisely the opposite of disembodied, detached, abstraction. Obviously, I've known both men and women who are still stuck in a twentieth century model what divides God's tenderness between those who know romantic love and those who don't.

I've witnessed men and women who say they believe in cross-gender friendship but who are quite anxious about entering into "powerful cherishing" within cross-gender friendship.

And then here was Jane. So entering into an ethic of tenderness with me last night. Jane has become another woman who can stand on her own two feet, think on her own two feet and embrace the wonderful, life-giving ethic of tenderness between cross-gender fiends that can go deep into God's infinite tenderness.

There is a real sense in which part of my maturing attentiveness in an ethic of non-romantic tenderness is to pay attention, to listen, to become aware of both women and men, single or married, who have this courage to step into cherishing as a virtue in relational love in cross-gender friendship. They are able to recognize tenderness in their midst and they know an infinitely tender God is near them.

Recently, a dear female friend gave me this card for my birthday. In the front of the card has a quote by Ghandi."In a gentle way you shake the world." Here's to the tenderness of God shaking the world.

]]>Dan BrennanWed, 14 Feb 2018 06:27:51 -0600Skyscrapers & Elevators: What Women Have Taught Me About Non-Romantic Tendernesshttps://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/02/s.html
https://www.danjbrennan.com/2018/02/s.htmlSkyscrapers & Elevators: What Women Have Taught Me About Non-Romantic Tenderness I would like to warmly share with you one of the most intimate, vulnerable, and tender blog posts I feel compelled to write in a long, long time. I...Skyscrapers & Elevators: What Women Have Taught Me About Non-Romantic Tenderness

I would like to warmly share with you one of the most intimate, vulnerable, and tender blog posts I feel compelled to write in a long, long time. I will have failed miserably or fallen far short if this post does not communicate this tender vulnerable time in my life right now.

It feels so vulnerable because I’m in some kind of new openness, new sensitivity, new awareness, new tenderness, new fork-in-the-road in unfamiliar territory. This is attempting to give you some glimpse into what feels like for me is an intimate turning point between my heart and God’s heart.

I am hoping somehow this post communicates this unbelievably most precious, most valuable, most cherished connection I have in this new season with God’s heart. That feels scary.

I am attempting to do something I have done over and over again in my marriage and in my most trusted friendships with women: I hold out my heart. I expose my heart. I consciously turn toward tenderness.

I reveal what is priceless or of great value in my heart in the moment with the utmost hope my wife or those female friends can tenderly recognize the intimate disclosure for what it is and cherish it, prize it, hold it in their “hands” as it were; they would respond with greatest freedom to be moved, touched, or spontaneously respond with appropriate reaction that is needed for in the moment. Depending upon the disclosure, it could be joy, relief, compassion, delight, softness, warmth, gentleness, and so on.

Likewise, for me, priceless, inestimable, precious relational treasures occur when my wife or my female friends share with me when no one else is around, a tender secret, a tender thought, a tender struggle, a tender experience they would not feel at home sharing with a stranger or an acquaintance.

This intimate “turning point” between my heart and God’s heart feels like I have “seen” God’s tenderness, as if for the first time. As soon as I write that, I am immediately frustrated because I am fumbling as I am seeking to convey something that is tender and beyond language, precious to me the moment.

What prompted this turning point was when I heard the news that one of my dearest and closest friends was pregnant with her first child. In the moments, hours, days, and weeks to follow, I found myself praying with a fresh and unbelievably new sense of tenderness for her, for her husband, and for the tiny one within her.

This conscious, fresh, new attentiveness provoked me to discover new language to describe my new "chapter": non-romantic tenderness. It provoked me to reflect with a fresh intensity what my wife, Sheila and other women have taught me about non-romantic tenderness--God's tenderness between men and women at the intersection between friendship and sexuality.

How do I find adequate words to describe how much, in our romantic sharing of our love together, our romantic journey together in the last ten plus years Sheila's deep, bottomless, endless tenderness for the development and flourishing of non-romantic tenderness between me and my female friends? How can I begin to convey that somehow, this intimate turning point between God's heart and my heart, is this "pinch me, is this real" experience that there is no limit to cross-gender friends knowing God's tenderness?

God's Tenderness is the Breakthrough for Non-romantic Tenderness

What makes this season so fresh for me in language is to see that women have taught me God's tenderness as a healthy, vibrant, sacred, life-giving way for knowing and enjoying non-romantic tenderness. It's God's tenderness.

Claiming God's tenderness as the fountain for all non-romantic tenderness is a formidable challenge for all the stereotypes, prejudices, biases, and preconceived ideas we all share about "tenderness." Tenderness can immediately convey weakness; for some it can mean exposure to emotional risk or vulnerability that's akin to only risks taken in a dating relationship or romantic relationship.

For some, God's tenderness is a synonym for God's mercy or compassion. It's another synonym for gentleness. Tenderness can mean unrivaled softness or gentleness. I can't tell you the number of times I have felt Sheila's uncommon gentleness over a cross-gender friend or over something to do with non-romantic tenderness. Then, I also have known female friends to be fully present with me in the moment as to show me moments of gentleness that were so precious to me.

But there have been women--mentors, theologians, authors, therapists, friends and my wife--who have helped me to see a fuller vision of God's tenderness as the fullness of God's relational love. It describes the limitless depth and strength of God's heart for shalom, justice, gentleness, and shared intimate beauty. What does it feel like to know a shared tenderness that is not exploited? Not manipulated? Not coerced?

It conveys a surge or an intuition toward trust in a spontaneous moment that is free from anxiety. If two people have a working trust in a moment in their relationship, describes therapist Brian Thorne, then a number of things that can happen. A whole range of unexplored possibilities. "Tenderness becomes a possibility," he writes, "at the moment when two human persons meet and are able to give way to the liberating urge of trust."

What has been a "breakthrough" for me over and over again, are the women who have modeled to me surprising, unexpected, unanticipated, spontaneous, off-the-cuff, as well as planned turns toward God's heart for non-romantic tenderness in cross-gender friendships. In an anxious, toxic world such embodied tenderness stands out as something only God could enjoy and inspire.

In a world where cross-gender friends are always expendable, replaceable, disposable, nonessential, unnecessary in comparison to romantic chemistry and love, there are women who have modeled to me God's unrivaled non-romantic tenderness in terms of relational love over and over gain.

It is a social norm for women and men to not choose deepening tender trust between cross-gender friends. It is a social norm for individuals to have boundaries as barriers between friends.

My wife and other particular women in my journey (single and married) have modeled to me this liberating trust that does not compete with romantic love or romantic partners.

The Elevator Image for Non-Romantic Tenderness

The elevator in a tall skyscraper is by no means a perfect image and subject to many criticisms. I'm not claiming it as a perfect metaphor. But, the fascinating thing is that I have had some anxious-free, tender conversations with my wife and other women in the last month or so about tall skyscrapers, elevators, and non-romantic tenderness. Again, liberating tender trust with an upward movement toward unexplored heights of God's tenderness for cross-gender friends.

What these particular women have taught me is that God's tenderness begets tender trust, which begets tender trust, which begets tender trust--the higher and higher you choose to ride the elevator.

It is a glass elevator. It is located in the skyscraper in such a way as to have views outside the building. The higher up one goes, the more breathtaking, scenic, panoramic views.

In this elevator, both individuals have mutually shared power to press buttons for exploring the heights of God's unlimited and open-ended non-romantic tenderness. One friend can press a button to move up to the next floor. The other may choose a button to stop moving upward. Anytime a friend may choose a button to stay on the floor where they are. They may choose to stay at that floor for the rest of their friendship.

What is essential in this image of elevator for cross-gender friends is that for both the male friend and the female friend, in each choice for pressing a button, there is a healthy radical choice of self-care, of self-love. Any mutual movement "up" to the next floor is recognized as a form of self-care for both. Any decision to press the button to stay on this floor represents the freedom of a friend to stay on this floor out of self-care and mutual respect. Both of the friends may choose a button that is a healthy decision for them to go back to the first floor and opt out of the elevator ride (cross-gender friendship) entirely. Each floor even the ground floor has some experience or knowledge of God's tenderness.

The image is not completely perfect for exploring God's heart for non-romantic tenderness, but in some powerful ways, it is fitting. Many individuals have authentic anxieties about exploring the "heights" of God's tender love in cross-gender friendships.

In this analogy, each floor going upward, each floor opens both spouses and cross-gender friends to enjoying and knowing God's boundless delight in and freedom for non-romantic tenderness in cross-gender friendship. One of the things I like about this analogy is that I've experienced particular women (Sheila's one of them) with whom I trusted to push the button to go to higher and higher in God's exquisite and infinite tenderness.

Velocity, movement, pace, etc. are all a part of moving upward. I've known and felt some women skip a few floors. Instead of taking us up to the next floor, they sweetly and tenderly chose to bypass several floors to unexplored heights of tender trust in cross-gender friendship. Again, each button to go up or down represents the greatest and highest level of self-care. The beautiful risk to go up higher reflects self-care and tender love for their friend.

Friends, how does one describe the powerful mutual cherishing that happens in deep, day-to-day intimate care between cross-gender friends? How does one describe the authenticity when both friends assume the highest good in the other's friend's care and hunger to know and to be known? Day by day? Week by week? How can one describe God's tenderness where cross-gender friends intentionally choose to know one another and be known by one another in tender love over the long haul?

For me, what is particularly striking about the glass elevator image is that women with full agency and awareness can "see" all the formidable challenges of moving from one floor to the next and yet they choose to go higher because in their self-care, God's tenderness has given them a green light to move higher. I've known women to choose the beautiful risk to go higher. There are "floors" to know a risk of tender trust means you don't know the outcome, you are not trying to control the outcome but you want mutual tenderness to take you there.